All Together, Cousins
by The Seven of Us
Summary: When Thalia finally ran away with her toddler brother, Jason, she gathered her cousins: she and her cousins being the children of the Big Three. As Jason gets older and their motley group expands to six, Thalia resigns herself to the fact that she won't always be the leader of the pack. As she accepts that, something more is coming, able to challenge even the gods above. AU.
1. Thalia and Jason Grace

Thalia screamed and hugged her baby brother to her chest tighter as the hellhounds closed in for the kill, scrambling against the gravel road. Jason clutched at his sister's shirt, looking up at her with the same electrical blue eyes that Thalia had, that they had both inherited from their father.

She darted into a side tunnel and pressed herself flat against the wall, trying to pant quietly. There was the thunder of paws against the ground, and then it was gone. Thalia sobbed into her brother's hair with relief.

"'Lia?" Jason asked quietly.

Thalia took a deep, steadying breath. "Yeah, Jace?"

"I cold…" Jason said quietly, looking remorseful, like he'd been caught doing something bad.

"No no no," Thalia assured him. "It's okay, Jason. Don't worry, we'll get something going. We just have to get somewhere safe. Far away from here. Here." She took off her jacket and wrapped it around him. The entire thing was way too big, it was that way on Thalia, so it absolutely dwarfed Jason, but it gave Thalia an idea. She set down Jason momentarily and turned the jacket upside down, and instructed him to step into the arm holes. She zipped the jacket up, hoisted Jason onto her chest again, and tied the loose part of the sleeves of the jacket around her waist. She took off her belt, looped it around Jason and her own torso, and cinched it tightly enough so that Jason would be secure, but he wouldn't be crushed. This left Thalia's hands free.

Jason smiled up at his sister. "Warm."

Thalia smiled and gently poked his nose with a finger. He giggled and covered up his face. After a couple of seconds, he peeked through his fingers, and then raised one hand, and poked Thalia's nose as well. There was the distinct sound of an electrical discharge, and Jason shocked his sister with enough voltage to temporarily stun a normal human. On Thalia, however, it just tickled. She laughed and rubbed her nose so that the feeling would subside. Jason laughed at the face his sister was making.

People passed by the alleyway, talking noisily, and Thalia abruptly stopped laughing and clamped a hand over Jason's mouth. As quickly as she could with a two-year-old strapped to her chest, she darted out the other end of the alley.

She quickly settled into a brisk pace. Keeping to the shadows of the night as much as possible, she eventually left New York City. At one point, she looked down to see Jason curled up in the jacket, his head resting against her collarbone, sound asleep. Thalia unwound her scarf enough so that Jason's other ear was covered up, so that he wouldn't be at risk to infections in his ear, and so that his head wouldn't get so cold. She guessed that he had been lulled asleep by the steady swaying rhythm.

Thalia made it to the edge of the city, and was now surrounded by trees. She gathered together a pile of dry wood and zapped it. Fire ignited instantly.

Soothed by the warm light, Thalia propped herself up on a nearby tree, arms wrapped loosely around her baby brother, and was lulled to sleep by the crackling fire and crickets chirping about her.

* * *

She woke to someone taking Jason.

Thalia screamed a battle cry and kicked whoever it was in the crotch before her eyes even opened. She grabbed Jason and stuffed him down the jacket again, scrambling away from the would-be kidnapper, instinctively kicking into a battle stance with a large stick as a weapon. Despite the fact that she could break it with her bare hands, she deemed it an acceptable weapon because frankly, she didn't have anything else.

"That underhanded trick does not work on females," the kidnapper said. "Hurtful, yes, but not incapitating."

"The streets aren't fair," Thalia snapped, clutching Jason with one hand to make sure he was still there.

"You're the one who ran away," the female kidnapper said mildly.

"I wasn't complaining," Thalia growled. "I was stating a fact. Now who are you?"

The woman drew herself up. "I am Lady Hera."

"Ah, yes, my father's wife," Thalia said dryly. "I'm so sorry that we're your husband's bastards, but _that_ is _not_ grounds for _kidnapping_!"

Hera's jaw tightened. "Admittedly, I am angry with Zeus. However, that is not the reason you and Jason must be separated."

Thalia's eyes were steely. "Give me one good reason why I should be separated from _my baby brother_?"

"That is nothing I can share with you."

"Does it involve Jason dying if he stays with me?" Thalia growled.

Hera hesitated. "It's a possibility. I don't believe so, but there is that marginal chance."

"I'll take my chances," Thalia stated flatly.

Hera threw up her hands in exasperation. "You're such a _child_!"

"That's because I'm _ten_," Thalia snapped. "At least I have an excuse."

"Jason isn't even Greek!" Hera cried.

"So?!" Thalia screamed. "My mother's abusive, my father abandoned me, I'm on the streets, protecting myself and my brother against muggers, monsters, and who knows what else! I _absolutely refuse_ to lose _any more family_!"

Hera's eyes softened. "I'm sorry, Thalia. I really am. I am the goddess of family. But would you rather the loss of your brother, or the possible restarting of the Civil War?"

"To me, both options sound equally bad," Thalia said dryly, clutching Jason tighter.

"He's Roman, Thalia. Your brother is a Roman, a son of Jupiter," Hera said finally. "When the Greeks and Romans come together, they clash. They fight. Blood is spilled. Wars are raged. _Please_, Thalia."

Thalia's eyes narrowed. "Fine, take him. Take him, and I will move heaven and hell to find him again. Take him, and I will find a god or goddess that I can beat that knows about both sides, and I will first ask them to tell me where the Roman camp is, and if that doesn't work, I will _shock_ the information out of them. Take him, and I will tear Olympus down more thoroughly than any war. And when I do that, I will seek you out, and I will make your demise just as pain-filled as my life without my baby brother. And trust me, this is a promise. And I _always_ follow through with my promises."

"You can't possibly follow through with this one."

"No," Thalia agreed. "Not yet. Not now. Later, when I get older. Just think, for my sixteenth birthday, I get to raze Olympus to the ground for separating me from my brother."

Thalia said the last sentence in a cool, controlled voice, watching as Hera got paler and paler.

Hera began to glow until it was nearly blinding, and Thalia shut her eyes, clamping a hand over Jason's eyes, dropping her stick.

When the glow faded, Hera was gone. Thalia opened her eyes and set Jason next to the smoldering coals of the fire as she gathered wood as if nothing happened. She dropped the load into the coals, zapped it, and stood, brushing her hands off. She studied her brother curiously.

"Roman, huh?" she mused. "Based on Hera's reaction, this probably hasn't happened before, Greek and Roman children in the same family. They're probably waiting anxiously to see if this blows up in Zeus's face." She snorted. "I don't think they understand the words _sibling bond_."

Jason struggled free of the jacket. Thalia sat next to the fire, next to her brother. Already guessing what Jason was doing, she let him go behind a tree and relieve himself. She could see a little tuft of blond hair. When he came back from around the tree, he made a beeline towards the jacket and snuggled in. Thalia smiled at the fact that her improvisation was appreciated. She knelt in front of him.

"Okay, Jason. I'm going into the woods to get enough wood to make a bow, so that I can hunt and we can eat. If that lady comes back, or if those big dogs from yesterday come, or even just another homeless person, you scream as loud as you can and try and shock the heck out the person, okay?"

Jason grinned and showed two fingers, which had electricity running between them.

Thalia smiled proudly. "Good. Stay near the fire, do me a favor and try not to burn yourself, okay?"

Jason nodded. "Okay, 'Alia!"

Thalia resisted the urge to 'aww', and simply smile reassuringly at him, and trooped through the woods, looking for strong, supple, straight branches to carve into a bow.

* * *

Over the next three days, Thalia worked on her bow, killed six hellhounds and about a dozen snake women with the branch she pointed at Hera with, stoked the fire eight times over, and kept Jason well-fed and mostly warm and happy.

To her delight and disgust, monsters often kept the weapons of the demigods that they had defeated. Before dissolving them, Thalia happily disarmed them and then stuck them with the pointy end of whatever she confiscated. At one point, Thalia had tied up one of the snake women and taken her quiver of arrows, her jacket (which was quite warm, although it smelled a little snaky), her stick with what looked like a gigantic metal toothpick coming out of the end of it (she later found out that it was a Roman weapon, called a _pila_), and the snake women's anklet that was studded with Celestial bronze spikes.

Thalia was growing a collection of weapons. For once, she thanked her father that she attracted so many monsters. She had a badly bent sword, a long knife, a spear, a quiver of arrows, a hammer (like a true battle hammer, it made Thalia wonder about the demigod that used to wield it), the _pila_ (the giant metal toothpick), and a half-finished bow.

Jason got the long knife, and Thalia generally took the spear when it came to battles at the moment. She was contemplating on whether or not to give Jason the battle hammer, or if she should use it first to beat the sword back into shape.

On the night of the second day, she came up with a third idea.

Before Jason woke, she went to the store and managed to get a used shovel for a dollar, which was an unheard of price in New York City. When she went back to the camp, Jason was thankfully still sleeping, and Thalia set to work, digging under the tree's roots. No, she wasn't trying to uproot the tree, merely tunnel under it enough to store weapons and things that they might need in the future.

By noon, she was now under the tree, and she'd had to dig herself back out a couple of times from the amount of dirt she was displacing. Another two hours, and she had made a circular room about five feet wide and five feet tall; it was big enough to store their weapons and it was a place to sleep if they needed to hide.

When she had finished the first of many hideouts to come, she crawled out and waved to Jason, who started laughing hysterically at Thalia's dirt-covered form. Thalia's grin turned wry. "C'mon in, little brother," she said, picking up Jason and bringing him into the hideout. Jason scrambled from Thalia's arms, looking around. He bent over and touched the dirt.

"Cold," he commented. "Neat."

"Yup," Thalia said, smiling at him. "We'll be putting the sword and the hammer here, as well as any other weapons we get."

Jason frowned. "Home?"

Thalia shook her head. "We've got to get away from our mother. The farther away, the better. This will be our home temporarily, but only for another couple of days."

Jason nodded his head solemnly, but Thalia really wasn't sure about how much he understood.

_This is how their days passed: making hideouts, fighting monsters, drifting farther away from the City that Never Sleeps. For two years or so, the days passed this way, until monsters drove the siblings back to New York, back to their first hideout, where they discovered a little boy, about a year older than Jason, with gravity-defying black hair and striking sea-green eyes._

* * *

**Ruby: I decided to give this writing thing a shot. Don't know if it's any good, I just wrote. The starting image that I had for this was the Big Three's children facing the gods, ready for battle. Thalia would be in front, kneeling, with Medusa's horrible face showing on her shield and spear at ready, with Nico and Percy behind her on Thalia's left and right, crouching, their respective swords drawn and Nico's free hand alight with hellfire, whereas Percy's free hand would be clenched with a very tightly contained storm swirling around him. Bianca and Hazel would stand straight behind those two boys, Bianca drawing the shadows to her and Hazel with fistfuls of cursed gems. Jason, taller than all of them and flying in the air, would be behind the daughters of Hades, electricity crackling along his arms and sparking through his ruffled hair, his ****_gladius_**** drawn. **

**That image will be in here once I collect all of the Big Three's children. To give you an idea: First it's Thalia and Jason, then Percy joins the group, then Nico and Bianca, and finally, Hazel. Mrs. O'Leary will probably come in somewhere in there, as well as Blackjack and Tempest and maybe Thalia's falcon. Also, the Big Three's children at first don't get along with Camp Jupiter. Not necessarily, the ****_Romans_****, because please, Jason's Roman, and they have no problem with him, but later on (I think in the next chapter), there will be problems with the Romans. I made their current praetor an idiot that doesn't know how to handle an overprotective Thalia. XD **

**Also, I have no idea where Mora and Hector have gone. They just up and disappeared one day. Don't blame me.**

**-Ruby**

**PS-be grateful, you can see a rough sketch of Thalia Grace in the cover. That is where I will start. Tomorrow I will update it with Percy and Nico. Jeez, Percy will be hard to do. I don't think you'll get to see the storm. Maybe water wrapped around his hands and twinning up his sword? Thoughts? Opinions?**


	2. Percy Jackson

**awesomeness: My first reviewer! Hello! My updates will only be on the weekends, so you can probably expect like once a week updates, twice a week if the chapters are short...although I'm going to be basically re-writing the Titan's Curse *is daunted at the prospect* So that'll probably max out your number of chapters for next weekend.**

**Guest5678: Like I told awesomeness, my updates (ideally) will be only on the weekends, so probably about once a week. Don't get used to once a day updates!**

**Tasnuba Sukanna: Wow, interesting username. Does this chapter satisfy you?**

**Darth perlia: Um, yeah, about PercyxThalia...in case you haven't noticed, there's like a six-year difference between Thalia and Percy's ages, since Thalia doesn't get turned into a tree (in case you haven't noticed, this is an AU). So, yeah, no PercyxThalia. Although I did consider it at one point.**

* * *

Thalia and Jason cautiously made their way to the tree that Thalia dug the first hideout under, listening for danger, their eyes sweeping the landscape. Jason, the top of his head now halfway up Thalia's back, him being three feet, ten inches against Thalia's five feet, two inches.

They stood back-to-back, awaiting danger, Thalia with her bow taut and nocked, Jason with his long knife in one hand and a short sword called a _gladius_ in the other.

Something popped, and Thalia jerked her arrow towards the sound. Jason glanced at her, and she nodded once, and jerked her chin in the direction of the noise.

Thalia found the source of the noise first, almost by accident. Suddenly the tip of her arrow was almost touching a nose. A human nose.

Yelping, startled, Thalia scrambled backwards, thinking she almost shot her brother. Then she realized that Jason didn't have green eyes, or unruly black hair. Jason wasn't dead on his feet from tiredness. And Jason wasn't seven-ish.

The boy seemed just as startled, like, _a scream escaped his mouth_, kind of startled. Thalia guessed he didn't like that his nose almost brushed a deadly weapon.

Jason whipped towards the commotion, to see Thalia scrambling away from the boy and said boy hollering like a banshee.

"Don't kill him!" Thalia yelped as Jason charged forward. She unstrung her bow, stuck the arrow back in its quiver, and dropped her bow, so as to grab the six-year-old by the shoulders.

The boy stopped hollering, looking at the pair warily. "Who are you people?!"

Thalia blinked. "I'm Thalia, this is my brother, Jason. I'm sorry I almost killed you."

The boy blinked, like he wasn't used to people apologizing to him. "It's okay," he said softly. "Thanks for stopping your brother."

Thalia knelt down to the kid's level. "What's your name, kiddo? Why are you out here?"

He smiled a little. "I'm Percy. Percy Jackson. These things came to the apartment, tore off the door, and Gabe and his buddies all got thrown, and my mom tried to stop them, but they kept coming after me, so I ran to my room and climbed out the fire escape, and I thought that they'd follow me instead of going after Mom, so I just ran in a straight line, ya know? And they _did_ follow me, they followed me for a long while, but then they started getting closer, and I ran between buildings until I got to here. I don't know where this is. Where are we?"

Thalia, startled, blurted out: "You're a demigod?!" Then, to Jason, "He's a demigod?!"

Jason glanced at his sister, and said, "You really expect me to know?"

Thalia's speech patterns halted completely as her brother mimicked her perfectly when she got irritated at Jason's constant questions.

"What's a demigod?" Percy asked.

"A demigod is a discussion for another time," Thalia said firmly. "Do you like your mother?"

Percy grinned and nodded. Then his face fell. "I don't like Smelly Gabe, though."

Thalia nodded slowly. "That's okay, kiddo. We'll take care of you. We just need to pay a visit to your mother, so that she knows that you're okay."

Percy swallowed.

"Where do you live?" Thalia questioned gently.

Percy scuffed the ground with his foot. "Manhattan."

Thalia whistled. "Jeez, kiddo, you ran a long way, especially for someone who has no endurance training. C'mon. Let's go see Mrs. Jackson."

* * *

Thalia rang the door bell, Jason and Percy on either side of her. She could hear someone grumbling, "I'm comin', I'm comin', hold yer horses!"

He sounded like he was drunk. Thalia swallowed, now apprehensive about bringing Percy back, even for a short time. Jason may not remember their mother, but Thalia did. She remembered how abusive she was when she was drunk. Thalia was treated like a slave from just after Jason had been born up until she and Jason ran away.

She refrained from shuddering when he opened the door. Not only did he look like a walrus stuck in thrift store clothes, he radiated a stench that could mask a dozen Big Three kids. It was next to a miracle that the monsters smelled Percy. Either that, or Percy was much stronger than your average demigod.

"We're not interested in whatever yer sellin'," he slurred. Then his eyes landed on Percy. "Ya little punk! Ya had the nerve to come back!"

Smelly Gabe (Thalia presumed that this was the person Percy had called 'Smelly Gabe', as it was an apt description) fairly roared this into Percy's face, who flinched away from the stench of moldy pizza and gym shorts. Beside Thalia, Jason wrinkled his nose, but wisely kept quiet.

"He won't be coming back," Thalia said coolly, interrupting the horrid man's slurred tirade. "However, I wish to speak with Mrs. Jackson."

Gabe narrowed his eyes at Thalia. "He won't be coming back?"

Thalia shook her head. "You'll never see him again."

He stepped aside to let the threesome in. As Percy went by him, Gabe grabbed him.

Thalia had an arrow nocked and pointed at the man's head faster than he could blink. "As you'll never see him again, Percy can now be considered either a brother or a son to me. As you just made—and are still making, in fact—a very threatening maneuver on my adopted son, I am liable to turn you into the police for child abuse and battery assault. Even if I wasn't able to, I am a very accurate shot. I can kill you and your three buddies that are attempting to sneak up behind me within eight seconds. I know, I've done it before."

Gabe slowly released Percy's collar and backed away.

Thalia smiled in satisfaction. "Good. Now, Mrs. Jackson—or at least I'm assuming that you're Mrs. Jackson?"

The brown-haired woman had walked in halfway through Thalia's speech. She blinked, and the first thing she said, not 'oh my god I have a terrorist in my house' or even, 'why does a twelve-year-old have deadly weapons?' Oh no, Mrs. Jackson said, "Oh, please, call me Sally."

Thalia flicked her eyes towards Sally in surprise. "Uh, do you have somewhere private we could talk?"

She nodded affirmative, and turned back towards the hall. Percy followed after his mother, and after a head jerk, Jason followed Percy. Thalia followed up with her bow still taut.

Sally sat down on the edge of a bed. Percy climbed up onto her lap, and she hugged him tightly. "What's going on?"

Thalia sat down. "As you know, your son was attacked by monsters today. Jason and I found him at our first hideout, lost and extremely tired."

Sally looked at her son disapprovingly. "Didn't I tell you to not talk to strangers?"

"To be fair, he was panicked. I thought he was an enemy and nearly shot him," Thalia said sheepishly.

"She said sorry," Percy said quickly, as if that made it all better. Thalia highly doubted it. If someone nearly shot Jason, she'd go mother bear on that person.

Sally buried her face in her son's hair. "So he goes to camp?"

Thalia exhaled. "If he's a son of who I'm thinking of, no, he doesn't. He comes with us."

Sally looked at Thalia skeptically.

Thalia studied Percy. "Hard to tame, blue-black hair. Sea-green eyes. Mediterranean complexion. Laid-back, go-with-the-flow personality, loyal as the tide. He truly is his father's son. Me and Jason, well except for the eyes, we basically got nothing from our dad."

"Son of Jupiter," Jason introduced himself.

"Daughter of Zeus," Thalia said. "And he's a son of Poseidon. You're dealing with demigods, here, Mrs. Sally."

Sally shook her head, laughing a little. "Actually, I believe you are quite like your father, Thalia. You are as stubborn as a rock and really don't introduce new things well."

Thalia gaped at her. "You met my father?"

Sally nodded. "I've met all of the Big Three. Poseidon as a lover, Zeus tried to blast me when I was bearing Percy because I screamed at him, and Hades visited me in person once. We had an interesting conversation about Poseidon."

Now Sally had three gaping kids in the room.

"And here I thought _I_ was the only one who could scream at Zeus and live," Thalia said, her eyes as wide as saucers.

Jason shut his mouth with an audible _click_.

Percy had turned around to face his mother on her lap, his bewildered sea-green eyes huge. "What's a demigod?"

Sally smiled sadly at her son. "A demigod is a person who is half-god, like a child of a god and a normal person."

Percy chewed on his bottom lip. "They called me a demigod."

Sally nodded. "You are a demigod."

Percy chewed on his bottom lip some more. "So I did actually explode the sink into Gabe's face?"

That broke the somber mood. Thalia burst into hysterical laughter. Sally bit her lip and tried to keep a disapproving look on her face, but she kept breaking character and letting out a little chuckle at the memory. Jason was snickering at the mental image.

Thalia gasped for air, sounding like a dying duck. "Yeah, you probably did, kiddo!"

Sally nodded, trying to keep a straight face. "You're willing to take him on?"

Thalia shrugged. "He has just as much right to claim blood ties with me as Jason does. Admittedly, not as much, but still. He's my cousin. He can't possibly be worse than me on my bad days."

Sally nodded, looking distracted.

"Percy, why don't you show Jason your room?" Thalia suggested gently.

Percy nodded and hopped off his mother's lap, dragging Jason with him.

"Percy is mellow until someone gets hurt," Sally warned. "He does not care for his own safety. You do not know how right you were when you said that he was as loyal as the tide. That sink he mentioned? Gabe was close to hitting me. Percy made the sink explode, probably not intentionally, and Gabe was too stunned to do anything. He passed out for the rest of the day."

Thalia nodded, absorbing the information.

"He's dyslexic and ADHD. He has a strange craving for blue food, just a heads up if he says something strange, like, 'why are the pancakes brown?'"

Thalia laughed. "Dyslexia and ADHD are normal in demigods. The blue food, not so much."

Sally smiled.

Thalia hesitated, but then said: "I wouldn't mind making your house a hideout, Mrs. Sally, if Gabe wasn't here. I know you married him to cover Percy's scent, but…"

"I underestimated how strong it would be," Sally nodded rubbing her face tiredly.

Thalia smirked. "The man is stinky enough to cover a dozen Big Three's kids, but I think Percy has a knack for getting into trouble."

"You are right," Sally agreed.

Thalia thought. "We'll check up on you in six months' time?"

Sally nodded.

Hesitating at first, Thalia hugged the woman. Sally, in contrast, had no such hesitations as she hugged Thalia.

"You are strong to have lasted as long as you have," Thalia whispered in her ear. "You have managed to gain more respect from me than my own father has from me."

Sally laughed softly. "Let's not tell him about it, okay?"

"I haven't seen him since I was seven, I doubt I'll see him tomorrow," Thalia said dryly.

Sally smiled mischievously. "Let's not get Mr. Zeusie-Poo jealous now, okay?"

Thalia bit her lip, her shoulders shaking. _Zeusie-Poo_. Gods, that was pure gold.

* * *

Thalia studied Percy critically, annoyed about the shortage of weapons. They had the battle hammer from before, the bent sword, and the _pila_ that was taller than Thalia and weighed as much as Jason did. She ran a hand through her spiky hair, frustrated. The battle hammer was large enough that only she was proportionate to it; the sword was bent, and even if it wasn't, it'd be almost as tall as Percy; and Percy definitely couldn't lift the _pila_.

She sighed. "We'll be staying here awhile, guys," she said finally. "We've got a sword to fix."

To accentuate her statement, she started collecting dry wood, and plopped into the hollow in the ground where they last had a fire there. She pointed a finger carelessly, now having mastered the art of setting fires with lightning, and with a loud _POP_, the fire roared to life.

When she had discharged the lightning, there was a small _click_, nearly drowned out by Thalia's lightning. Both Thalia and Jason turned towards Percy, who sheepishly put the disposable camera down.

"What?" he protested when they kept staring. "It was cool!"

Thalia laughed. "Every time we make a stop for the night, I do that. Trust me, the novelty will wear off quickly."

"What does 'novelty' mean?" both boys asked simultaneously.

Thalia raised an eyebrow. "It means that the shock and excitement that came from the new thing would wear off quickly."

Jason and Percy nodded thoughtfully.

"I'm starting to seriously think you two are brothers, not cousins," Thalia said, amused.

They looked at each other, and then looked back at Thalia.

Thalia started laughing. "You asked the same question at the same time, you both nodded the same way, and now you just looked at each other without any hints, and then back at me. Two puppets attached to the same string."

Percy made a face. "Then wouldn't that mean that Jason was on top of me? Jason looks kind of heavy…"

"I am not heavy!" Jason protested.

"Speaking as someone who carried you until you were three and a half, yes, you are heavy," Thalia said dryly.

Jason turned towards his sister. "You're my sister! You're supposed to be on _my_ side!"

"I refuse to argue with truth," Thalia said cheekily, gathering more wood. "Hey, Percy, could you get us some water?"

Percy looked around for a water source.

Jason smiled a little. "Percy, you have to summon the water."

Percy glared at him. "How do I do that? I don't think it'll come if I call, 'heeeeere, water, water, water, water!'"

Thalia turned away to the fire to hide her silent laughter. She tossed the branches onto the already burning merrily wood. When she turned back around, Jason looked insulted. "No, you have to _make_ it come to you."

"Well, give me a bucket and I'll _make_ it come to me," Percy snapped, glaring at the ground.

Jason rolled his eyes. "No, you would go to the water and then lug it back here. That isn't forcing the water to come to you."

Percy and Jason glared at each other.

_Oh yeah, best friends and worst enemies_, Thalia thought with amusement, warming her legs next to the fire.

"You say that _I_ need to do it. Well, you _clearly_ know more than I do, so _you_ can do it as you obviously know how," Percy snapped at him.

"I control the _air_, not _water_," Jason said, holding out his hand and having a miniature twister twirl around the palm of his hand. "I dare _you_ to do this."

"Okay, guys," Thalia intervened. "Jason, you really aren't helping Percy get the water, and Percy, sarcastic remarks are unneeded—"

Percy glared at the ground harder. Suddenly the ground rumbled, and the ground next to Percy exploded in a shower of water and mud. A geyser twice as tall as Percy gushed not a foot away from the son of the sea.

Percy smirked, perfectly dry. "I got the water."

Then, he got out the disposable camera again, and snapped a picture of the jet of water.

Thalia could just see what the caption would be: _My first on-purpose geyser._

Jason looked dumbfounded. He also looked cold, as he was soaked.

* * *

"What. The. Heck?!" Thalia squeaked, spear at ready.

Percy laughed a little. "Three of the Big Three packs a lot of scent, Thals."

"Jason and I never got a freaking _army_ of monsters!"

"We're in California, Sis," Jason said dryly. "We've never been to Cali before, because of MountTam."

Percy frowned as he readied his sword. "What's MountTam?"

"MountTam is where the ruins of MountOthyrus lies," Thalia explained. "It's also where Atlas holds up the sky. Because of both things, California is packed with monsters like New York traffic."

"And you're the one wondering why we have an army of monsters surrounding us," Percy said dryly.

The three of them stood back-to-back, Thalia with her bow drawn, Jason and Percy with their _gladius_ and sword in their hands, respectively. Thalia was now 13, and the boys were six and seven, both rapidly catching up to her, standing at 4'1" next to Thalia's 5'4".

Suddenly the monsters surged towards them, and Thalia shot at the leading monster, disintegrating it instantly. Jason stabbed forward with his _gladius_ and slashed lethally with his long knife, killing two of the monsters that came within reach. Percy swept his sword in a wide arc, nicking one and disintegrating another two monsters as well. Thalia fired another three arrows before she realized that the monsters weren't attacking, they were running.

Thalia pointed her bow in the direction that the monsters were running from. Jason and Percy followed her lead, flanking her on either side, ready to fight. They were ignored by the monsters, except a stray tail that they all had to jump over or end up on their faces. Jason somehow managed to stay in the air. Thalia and Percy would've stared at him, but it frankly wasn't the time.

Jason poked his sister's shoulder. "Romans," he whispered.

Thalia's eyes flashed with understanding. "Good or bad?" she asked.

Jason shrugged.

"Percy, you must stay close to me," Thalia instructed quietly. "And for the love of the gods, please don't open your smart mouth."

"None of us love the gods all that much," Percy pointed out.

Thalia rephrased. "And for the love of your mother, please don't open your smart mouth."

Percy's retort was cut off by Thalia's maneuvering. "Okay," he said meekly.

Thalia smiled at him. "It'll be okay, Mom will be our top priority once we get out of this situation."

The Romans marched up to them. Leading them was a man with in full battle armor and a purple cape. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Whoa, mister!" Thalia said, drawing her arrow tighter against the string. "I don't know who you are, I just got done being attacked by monsters, and I've got two little kids to protect. If anything, _you're_ the one who should be answering _my_ questions."

"I outrank you, little girl," he said stiffly.

"There is no higher ranking than a son and daughter of Jupiter, Praetor," Jason said coolly. Lightning casually crackled between two of Thalia's fingers. The wind picked up.

"Let's put it this way, Praetor," Thalia said after Jason rather effectively made the guy lose his speech patterns for a bit. "You're facing three kids of the Elder Three that have been on our own for years. We have powers, and we definitely know how to use them. We have our chosen weapons, and we definitely know how to use them. We have battle strategies and signals that are only used by us. Even against forty demigods that are most likely at the top of their class, we can most likely hold our own."

"There haven't been any kids of the Elder Three in nearly a century," the guy said evenly.

Thalia shut her eyes, calling on her patience. "I'm sorry, are you blind? Or am I just seeing my brother hovering in the air, suspended by nothing? Am I hallucinating?"

Percy peered at Jason. "Nope! I see him too."

Thalia elbowed him gently.

"Then who is he?" the Praetor said, gesturing towards Percy.

Percy grinned at him. The Praetor's flask of water unscrewed itself. The water in the flask floated out and hovered in front of his face, taking the shape of the Praetor's flask. Then it changed into the shape of a dolphin, and then a trident. Then it plunged back into the flask.

"He's six!" the Praetor spluttered.

Percy disagreed. "I'm seven. Jason is six. Thalia is thirteen."

"Thalia is the only one old enough to join the Legion. She'll have to come with us. You can stay in New Rome," the Praetor said, advancing.

Thalia fired a warning shot that sheared off the plume on his helmet. He stopped. "All or nothing," Thalia said with steel in her voice

"The two boys are too young, too inexperienced—"

"_All. Or. Nothing._"

"A daughter of Jupiter would be at the top of the Legion. I'm sorry, but they can stay in New Rome, not bunk with the Legion."

"Nothing it is, then," Thalia said coolly.

"I am your Praetor, girl—"

"You are _not_ my Praetor. You are a sixteen-year-old _boy_ who is blustering and throwing his weight around. And I am _not_ joining the Legion. Not if my brothers can't come."

She knocked her arrow against her bow twice. The boys left her side and disappeared into the trees.

"C'mon, Miss Thalia," the Praetor said sternly.

"Come any closer and I'll shock the living daylights out of you," Thalia said calmly. "Gold conducts electricity. It should be fun to watch my harasser fall to the ground, convulsing uncontrollably."

She turned on her heel and swiftly, silently, walked towards the forest where Jason and Percy had hidden.

"C'mon out, guys! Let's go visit Mom," they heard her say. "They can shove their offer where the sun don't shine."

There was a laugh.

* * *

"Gods, I love your cooking," Thalia said, her eyes closed with bliss. Her expression was mirrored on Jason's face, while Percy was simply digging in, and Sally was watching with amusement.

"Sis is a good cook," Jason said slowly. "She doesn't have the same seasonings, though."

Thalia opened her eyes and gave her brother a wry look. "I dare you to find a variety of seasonings in the wild that won't kill us."

Jason scratched his head. "Okay, fair point."

For once, the three were relaxed. Thalia's bow and quiver and spear were in the living room some where, and Jason's _gladius_ and knife and Percy's sword were in Percy's bedroom. They were clean, warm, and being fed. Nothing better than that.

Thalia cut another piece of her steak. "How is the book coming?"

Sally gave her a grin. "It's almost done."

Percy bounced in his seat. "Oh! Oh! What's it called?!"

Sally's grin turned mischievous. "_To Tame the Sea_."

Thalia snickered. "Hey, could I borrow that book? Does it work for the _son_ of the sea?"

Sally got up from the table, laughing. She went into the kitchen and brought out _more food_.

"Dear gods, how did you cook all this without us noticing?!" Thalia cried, staring.

"It was hard," Sally agreed. "I kept telling you the smell was left over from breakfast."

"It does last that long sometimes," Percy agreed. "But normally only in the kitchen, not in the _entire house_."

Sally smiled sheepishly.

"Okay, whoa, Jason," she chuckled. "Smaller bites, jeez." She took the knife and steak from Jason and proceeded to cut it up into smaller pieces. She set the knife on the plate and slid it back over to her brother.

Percy laughed. "Why were you growling when you were trying to cut it up, Air Head?"

"You would too if you were frustrated, Kelpy!" Jason protested. "Besides, Thalia does it!"

"She does not!"

"Yes, I do."

Sally raised an eyebrow at Thalia. The daughter of Zeus mouthed to her, _See why I asked for that book?_

_Do they bicker like this often?_

_What's your definition of 'often'?_

_Daily._

_Then, yes, they do this often. They're too much alike to get along all the time. They've had to duke it out a couple times._

As if on cue, Percy's water glass started to swirl. Thalia took that as a cue to intervene. "Okay, guys, we duked it out yesterday, we don't need to do it again today, please."

Silence settled over the table.

"Hey, Jason, remember that dare you told me to do two years ago?" Percy asked, smiling a little.

Jason looked startled. "What, the tornado thing?"

Percy brought up his hand from under the table, smirking widely. "Not exactly a twister, but close enough."

On his hand was a really tiny hurricane. Jaws dropped around the table.

Percy closed his hand, and the hurricane broke apart and scattered with a damp breeze. He went back to eating.

"You didn't react like that when I flew," Jason asked suddenly.

"Trust me, I would've if we hadn't been in the middle of a battle," Thalia admitted.

Sally looked alarmed. "Battle? What battle?"

Percy rubbed his head sheepishly, though Thalia wasn't sure why. "We were in California. Somehow we got turned around and then all of a sudden we were surrounded by an army of monsters. We encountered Romans. Scared the living daylights out of them. And then we made going back to you top priority," Thalia summed up.

Sally turned towards Percy. "You never told me about a battle!"

"I didn't want you to worry!"

Sally sighed. "Percy, in case you haven't noticed, you're a demigod. Demigods' lives are dangerous. Scary. Being a demigod can get you killed in painful, nasty ways. I knew that from the start of my pregnancy with you, and I tried to protect you as much as I could."

"With _Gabe_ around?" Percy asked incredulously.

"Percy," Thalia said quietly, looking at her plate. "Gabe covered up your scent for years. Sally put up with him so that you could be safe from monsters."

Percy froze. He turned towards his mother. "You married Gabe…for me?"

Sally hesitantly nodded.

Almost faster than Thalia could track, Percy was halfway out the door. Thalia got up from her seat. "Gods, I hate having my training used against me," she growled, and darted out the door after him, grabbing her bow and quiver and slinging it on as she ran after her cousin.

After a full two hours, she found him in an alleyway, two miles from where he started. He looked empty. His eyes were lost. Thalia ran up to him and knelt in front of him, panting a little.

"What are you doing here?" Percy said quietly.

Thalia huffed, irritated. "I'm coming after you, you Kelp Head, what else?"

"My mom married him for me," Percy said flatly.

Thalia looked at him. "Now what on _earth_ does that have to do with _me_? I'm _Thalia_. I'm not Ms. Sally. And if it helps any, if I had been in Ms. Sally's position, I would've married him too."

"He hit Mom."

"He hit you, too," Thalia said angrily. "I saw the way you flinched when he yelled at you."

Percy flinched at her angry voice. Thalia breathed out, trying to calm down. "Look, Percy. I know what you went through. Have you ever wondered why Jason and I never visit our mother?"

"I thought she died."

Thalia shook her head. "No, Percy. She was an alcoholic. She was drunk. My mother beat me and treated me like a slave. I ran away when I was ten, dragging a two-year-old Jason with me. I knew, when she discovered me gone, she'd blame it on Jason, and she'd beat him too. I couldn't do that to him, so I took him with me. I gave him my coat in the dead of winter. I defied Hera for him. I fed him, kept him warm and mostly happy. And I would've done the same for you, too, if I'd known about you sooner."

Percy swallowed. Thalia sat down next to him, put an arm around him, and told him stories about their adventures, about Hera, about all the hideouts on the Eastern Seaboard and what happened to get them there. She told him funny stories about some of Jason's antics in the jacket that he still wore today. She told him about Jason's one- or two-worded questions and responses that lasted what seemed like forever. Thalia told him about a lot of things, including what Zeus and Jupiter was like when he was around.

Thalia was so engrossed in her memories that she didn't realize that Percy had fallen asleep until his head bumped against her shoulder. _I talked him to sleep_, she thought dryly, with a hint of amusement. Carefully, she picked up her cousin and carried him back to the house.

When they arrived back at the apartment, Thalia knocked on the door with her foot, unable to open the door herself, as her arms were full of Percy. Sally opened the door and gasped in shock that Thalia was carrying her son. Then Thalia whispered, "I talked him to sleep, don't worry. He's fine."

Sally snorted a little with laughter and opened the door wider. Thalia stepped into the warmth of the apartment gratefully. "C'mon, little brother," she called softly.

Jason's blond eyebrows rose when he saw Percy being carried by his sister, but followed his sister anyway, into Percy's bedroom. Thalia set Percy gently down on the bed, and then crawled in next to him. She patted the bed next to her for Jason. Jason laid down next to his sister and curled up into a little ball, snuggling next to her. He was out in seconds.

Just as Thalia was about to drift off, Sally came into the bedroom and draped a quilt over the three of them. Warmth enveloped her, and she fell asleep.

* * *

Thalia woke to sunlight streaming through the window and herself on her back with an arm wrapped around the boys on either side of her. She was warm and sleepy. Of course, her stomach decided that it was high time to file a complaint. The growl was so loud it woke Jason, who was curled up like a cat and his head was near Thalia's abdomen. His head blearily poked itself out from under the covers.

"Someone kill the sun," he groaned, and ducked back under the covers again. "And kill Thalia's stomach while you're at it," he added, sounding muffled, as Thalia's stomach filed another complaint.

Sally came into the doorway with Percy's disposable camera. A faint _click_ caused Thalia to open her eyes again and Percy to stir beside her.

"Hi, Air Head," he mumbled.

"Hi yourself, Goldfish," she groaned.

"Really?" Jason moaned as he stretched. "I can't sleep with you two talking and Thalia's stomach making a noise like an artillery gun, gods."

"My stomach is not that loud," Thalia mumbled. "So shut up, Sparky."

"Hypocrite."

"I'm not the one that's attempting to shock me," Thalia muttered, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"That's my stomach you just put your elbow in!" Percy yelped, shooting up and hugging his stomach.

"Sorry," Thalia apologized.

"Could you two get _any louder_?" Jason mumbled, burrowing back under the covers.

"Yes," they said simultaneously.

Jason groaned and burrowed deeper. He looked like a lump in the covers. Percy and Thalia looked at each other and grinned evilly. Thalia pinned Jason down and Percy started tickling him through the covers.

"Lemme 'lone!" Jason gasped out between giggles. It was incoherent from the quilt covering him, and for a second Percy stopped tickling him.

"What did he say?" Percy questioned Thalia.

Thalia grinned. "I think he said to do it some more!"

"No I didn't!" Jason shrieked.

Sally snapped another picture, the small click lost in Jason's giggles and Thalia and Percy's mock-evil laughter. Her shoulders were shaking.

For a second, she swore that she saw Poseidon and Zeus standing in the shadowy corner of the room, smiling wryly as they looked at their respective children. Then Poseidon turned to Zeus, and Sally read his lips as _I told you so_. Zeus huffed, and Poseidon laughed soundlessly, and the two (probably imaginary) gods vanished.

"Hey," she called. "Who's ready for breakfast?!"

Thalia's head shot up, and she released Jason. "I am!"

Jason—quilt covering him and all—tackled her to the bed. Percy shrugged, and started tickling Thalia instead.

Sally burst into laughter.

_Many days passed this way for the next five years, laughing and playing and joking around in Ms. Sally's house. Occasionally the three would get cabin fever and roam around the country, but they never went to California again. Bizarrely, Thalia's sixteenth birthday came and went without a hitch (well, except for her getting dunked into ice water). All three of them grew stronger, and just in time for them too, for the Titan War was about to start._

* * *

**Ruby: *coughs and does double take* UM, AM I HALLUCINATING, OR DO I HAVE SEVEN REVIEWS AND NINE FAVORITES AND TEN FOLLOWS?! Holy ****_crap_****! *proceeds to fall off bed* You guys are amazing! I never expected this much feedback! Not when Mora and Hector's story is kind of...neglected. Thirteen reviews and nearly twenty thousand words...**

*****YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ THIS!*****

**I will ****_only_**** update on weekends. This includes chapters, covers, asides (oneshots branching off of this world, Hector posted one for his world like two weeks ago), and even author notes if I get dire enough to use them. **

*****OKAY, YOU'RE GOOD! ALTHOUGH, IF YOU WANT SPOILERS FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER, KEEP READING!*****

**Also, my chapters are getting progressively longer, these first two I already had written up, and I'm sorry to tell you that I'm not even halfway through the next chapter and it's just as long as this one already. Reason being: I'm just about re-writing the Titan's Curse. There's a different prophecy, different characters, different statuses, and different weapons. Next chapter, Annabeth will get her knife, and Thalia will get her famous shield. Unexpected characters come into play, people are forced to do impossible things, and Percy starts to come into the spotlight. You'll get more backstory on Annabeth, and pairings start to form (be warned, I like to experiment with my characters): PercyxAnnabeth, ThaliaxLuke, JasonxBianca. Romans are spotted by unknowing Greeks, and the Big Three cousins are forced to explain. All in all, drama. Be warned (as Doclover already found out), I like to bounce ideas off of people I can PM, so if you want some unintentional spoilers, review!**


	3. Nico and Bianca di Angelo

**Guest: (Omg supper cool and all i really hope nico and bianca come in cause that would be awesome! Do they side on the good or bad side of the titan war?) Oh yeah, they don't play a huge roll in this chapter, but they certainly will in upcoming chapters. I had fun with Thalia in this one.**

**awesomeness: (yes you are hallucinating you now have 14 Reviews! keep up the amazing work! can't wait for saturday now!) I actually had this done on Tuesday, all 9,117 words of it, but I refused to post it. And honestly, I'm amazed at the amount of feedback I'm getting from everyone on this story. I've already topped out Mora and Hector's story...I find that shocking, frankly.**

**Guest5678: (Please update soon. Good idea on putting Jason with Bianca. Although I don't like Thalia with Luke, I bet it will still be good.) I only update on the weekends, I told you guys that last chapter. Thanks! I like to throw everyone off for a couple seconds. I love Thuke, especially in the Demigod Diaries, that's awesome. I understand you don't like it, but Thalia with Percy or Nico is unrealistic as they're both far too young to be with a twenty-year-old (heck, Nico shouldn't be dating at ten years old in the first place), and I can't think of anyone else that she could be with that would be reasonable. Sorry.**

* * *

Twenty-year-old Thalia strode into Westover Hall confidently, Percy and Jason flanking her on her left and right. A teacher stormed up to them. "Might I ask who you are? Weapons are not permitted on the property."

"You may," Percy said cheekily.

Thalia snapped her fingers, manipulating the Mist. "You know us. I'm Thalia, a senior. This is Percy and Jason, who are an eighth grader and a seventh grader, respectively. We are late for the dance. We do not have weapons, but rather, things for the dance."

The teacher scowled. "Move along, you three. If you are to go to the dance, you need to arrive on time. I will let it slide just this once."

Then she stalked away.

"Gods," Jason whispered. "You'd swear someone taped a broomstick to her spine or something."

"I was just thinking the same thing," Percy agreed, watching her go.

"C'mon, guys," Thalia said nervously. "I have a feeling we aren't the only ones watching that stiffly-moving woman."

Percy and Jason stiffened and walked briskly to catch up with Thalia. All three of them stopped dead in the door. "What the crap?" Thalia muttered, staring.

There were black and red party balloons everywhere, with streamers hanging all over the place. The dance floor was virtually empty, and teenage girls moved around in packs. Some of the guys were hanging around awkwardly at the edges, and a there was a small area where guys were just shooting baskets for the heck of it. Kids and teachers alike were milling about in the stands, seemingly doing nothing constructive.

"People go to these for _fun_?" Jason asked, mystified.

"Look!" Percy said urgently, pointing discreetly at the stands. "There they are."

"Are you sure about that dream, Percy?" Jason asked warily as they moved to blend in with the crowd.

Percy shook his head. "I want to write it off as a nightmare, trust me. Despite what my mother says, Hades is seriously creepy on that throne."

"So basically, he wants us to infiltrate Westover Hall," Thalia checked.

"Uh-huh," Percy said.

"Kidnap the di Angelo siblings from right underneath their noses," Jason continued.

"Yup."

"And make sure the Campers, Hunters, or monsters don't get to them first," Thalia said doubtfully.

"Pretty much."

"I hate your dreams."

"Don't worry, I do too."

"Uh, guys?" Jason asked. "I think somebody else already got to step two."

Three heads snapped towards where the di Angelos had been. They were gone. Percy searched the area and the exits for a sign of them. At one of the exits, there was a green cap that the girl had worn.

Percy tapped his cousins' shoulders and pointed at the cap, and began thrusting his way through the crowd, Jason and Thalia following him. In the crowd, three or four other people were making their way to the doorway as well. "Possible enemies on both fronts," Jason warned, also seeing them.

They made it to the doorway before the others in the gym. Percy led his cousins into the entryway they had entered into not ten minutes before. Bianca and Nico di Angelo were up against the wall, fear in their eyes. Bianca narrowed her eyes. Her fists clenched. Nearly too late, Percy got that she was trying to warn him.

He drew his sword and sliced the missile going for his shoulder in half, sending it careening in two directions. Jason flicked his hand, and both pieces slammed against the far wall from the gust of wind. The three of them turned towards where the projectile had come from.

"I was told to bring the two smelling of death," the monster mused as he strode forward. He still looked human. "I doubt my master knows of the recent developments."

He smirked and drew himself up. "You will come quickly. Quietly. And if you do not, I will shoot one of the di Angelos."

The three looked at each other. Thalia tapped the side of her bow three times, seemingly thinking about it. Percy's blade dipped for a second. Jason nodded. "Okay," he said, sounding meek.

Thalia shelved her bow and Percy sheathed Riptide. Jason slipped his blades into their respective coverings. Percy nodded to Bianca in thanks. She nodded back, both their movements barely able to be seen.

The monster led the five Big Three kids outside, starting with the di Angelos behind him, and then Thalia, Jason, and Percy behind them. They trekked through the snowy forest until they came to a clearing. The monster pulled out a black box and spoke into it. Thalia realized that it was a walkie-talkie, and shuddered to think of why monsters were using mortal technology.

Percy looked at Thalia, barely suppressing a smirk. "May I?" he asked.

"No talking!" the monster said sharply.

"All yours," Thalia drawled, ignoring the monster. She and Jason backed up and grabbed the di Angelo siblings to give Percy the space he needed. They positioned themselves so that they could protect the siblings if needed.

Percy sprang forward, running on top of the soft, six-inch-deep snow, drawing Riptide again. The monster fired thorns wildly, trying to injure Percy, but he sliced through them all. He brought his sword down in a deadly arch and sliced through the monster like he was nothing but a mirage. He roared at the sky and started to grow.

He had the body of a lion with a scorpion's tail. The face was still the same—Percy guessed _that_ couldn't get any uglier—but now his mouth had all pointed teeth and fangs.

Percy appraised the situation. "Huh. A Manticore. We're surrounded by snow. There's a cliff twenty feet behind me. I _wonder_ what's going to happen."

The people that they spotted shoving their way through the crowds at the party suddenly appeared, armed and dangerous. The Manticore lunged for one of them—the one with the stringy brown hair—grabbed her in his claws, and escaped for the cliff, charging past Percy, who desperately tried to cleave the monster in half but only succeeded in creating a long, curved gash in the monster's side. Then he jumped off the cliff, the girl in his claws.

"_Clarisse_!" one of the others screamed. She had curly blonde hair and stormy grey eyes. She turned towards Percy. "You let it get away!" she screamed at him.

"I had it under control until you people showed up!" Percy yelled. "The Manticore knew it was outclassed, if you hadn't announced yourselves like that, the girl would still be here!"

"Outclassed by a shrimp like _you_?" she sneered.

"I suggest you do a headcount, Blondie. There's five faces here that you don't know. You have a satyr, a child of Hermes, and yourself," Percy retorted.

"Whoa, wait, time out," Bianca said, pointing at everyone like she was trying to connect the dots. "Who _are_ you people?!"

"An excellent question," the son of Hermes said. "Calm down, Annabeth. Clarisse is tough."

"She just _fell off a cliff_, Luke!" the blonde girl—Annabeth yelled, although with not as much fury as she had with Percy.

"She's not in the sea," Percy said mildly. "Otherwise I would've gotten her out already. Some kind of magic transported them to somewhere else."

"Thank you, whoever you are," Luke said. "See? Clarisse can top me out sometimes. She'll be okay. Now, back to her question. Who are you?"

Thalia stepped forward. "I am Thalia, daughter of Zeus."

Jason raised his hand in an awkward wave. "I'm Jason, full-blooded brother of Thalia, son of Zeus."

"Percy Jackson," Percy introduced himself distractedly. "Son of Poseidon."

The satyr let out a bleating laugh. "Hey, Annabeth, you called him a shrimp when you didn't even know his parentage. Now _that's_ ironic," he said between guffaws.

Annabeth shot an amused look at the satyr. "Thank you, Grover."

"Thalia, could you and Jason shoot planes out of the air?" Percy asked suddenly.

She looked startled. "Yeah, if we wanted to, probably. Why?"

Percy pointed. "Because we've got two helicopters coming to pick up the not-anymore-prisoners."

As soon as he said that, everyone could hear the _thump, thump, thump_ of the helicopters' blades.

"Percy?" Thalia said nervously.

"Yeah?"

"Remember that dare Jason told you to do seven years ago?"

Percy smiled a bit. "You mean the one with the tornado?"

"Yeah."

"What about it?"

"Could you do it again?"

Percy paled. "You that it's _that_ dire?"

"Mortal machines, Percy. We can't summon lightning bolts out of a clear sky."

Percy swallowed. "I'd need Jason's help. You'd have to summon two lightning strikes."

"I've done four within two minutes of each other," Thalia scoffed.

Percy exhaled and readied his sword. Jason drew his _gladius_ and long knife, studied them both, and sheathed the knife. The two boys circled each other, striking at each other in a slow rhythm. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The cousins picked up their pace.

Clouds began to boil to life overhead, dark and foreboding. Lightning flashed between the clouds. Percy and Jason's swords crossed and locked with each other, their noses less than an inch apart, their eyes swirling with raw power. Their eyes locked, flashing electric blue on stormy sea green, and thunder rocked the world. The black clouds spread as far as the eye could see.

Light blinded everyone but Thalia and Jason as she called down lightning from the already supernatural storm. It struck hard and violently against the first of the helicopters, and with the horrendously loud creaking of metal, it tilted and splashed brutally against the surface of the sea.

"Hurry up, Thalia!" Percy yelled, his voice cracking with strain.

Another clap of thunder, and the heavens opened up. Freezing rain came crashing down by the buckets, soaking everyone but Percy instantly.

Thalia took a deep breath and yelled at the top of her lungs. The sound carried on forever in the pouring rain. It seemed like the world froze, and then everything went white as Thalia called down a bolt strong enough to rival her father's, splintering the remaining helicopter into fiery pieces, sending it crashing down into the sea, sending up a plume of steam.

The three of the children of the Big Three sank to the ground, exhausted.

The rain let up a little bit, but no one noticed. They were either unconscious or just standing there, staring in shock.

They remained that way, with the rain pouring down on them, for a long time.

* * *

Percy groaned and rolled over, groping the nightstand for his sword. Instead, he found a pen.

_Ah, whatever. Close enough,_ his pounding mind decided.

"Dear gods," Percy muttered, propping himself up with one hand, the other going to his forehead.

"You have a very large reservoir of power," someone commented at the end of the bed. "Most children of Poseidon I have taught would've been out for the count for a minimum of two days while their power replenished itself."

Percy rolled out of his bed and fell with an ungraceful _thump_ on the floor. He staggered to his feet, his vision swimming. "Where's Thalia? Jason?"

"I doubt that you can see your own hand in front of your face right now, Percy," the man said gently. "They are safe."

"Then take me to them!" Percy demanded, blinking his eyes in an attempt to stop the world from spinning around him. "Where are we?! Who are you?! Are you even Greek?! Why does my head hurt so bad?! Why can't I see straight?! Are Thalia and Jason okay?!"

"You need sleep," the man said gently.

"Take me to them and I'll sleep," Percy snapped, swaying on his feet.

The man leaned over and put his hand on Percy's wrist as a warning, and then grabbed it lightly, so that Percy would have every opportunity to jerk away if he wished. Percy flinched at the physical contact, but the man guided him through several rooms and a hallway. His nose twitched; Percy smelled ozone.

"We're near," the man said, confirming Percy's thoughts.

Percy stayed silent and let the man guide him. The man slowed and then stopped. "This is Thalia's bed. There is another bed in the opposite direction that you're facing that is Jason's."

Swaying, dizzy, Percy walked over to Jason's bed slowly and felt his forehead. It was burning up. He walked around Jason's bed, to the other side, and started shakily pushing the two beds together.

Chiron watched in amazement as the unsteady, practically blind son of Poseidon shoved his cousin's beds together, probably with Herculean strength on his part, even though the beds were fairly light. Then he collapsed between the siblings, sleeping before his head hit the bed.

He sighed as he reached over and pried the pen from Percy's fingers. Don't want to accidentally have the cap come off and Percy's sword spring to full-form, now would we?

* * *

Thalia stirred, blinking her eyes open. She was lying on her side, curled around Percy's balled-up form protectively. Then she realized how much heat he was giving off.

"Oh my gods," she said, jerking upright and feeling his forehead. It was scorching. Thalia jerked her hand away and blew on it a little.

"He's okay," someone said. Her head jerked in that direction. There was a man sitting in a wheelchair, looking pensive. "Percy is okay. His body is just recovering from the severe drain on his powers. The fever will subside within twelve hours. Your own broke only three hours ago."

Thalia realized her clothes stank of dried sweat. "That kind of heat should kill someone!" she cried.

The man smiled wryly. "To be honest, I thought he would be out much longer than he was. He woke before either of you, bombarded me with questions, and demanded to be taken to you. He had a pounding headache, he was dangerously unsteady, and he was mostly blind because of his drained reservoir. And yet he managed to walk here, and push you and your brother's beds together and then promptly passed out between the two of you."

"Gods, Percy," Thalia groaned. "Don't you know when to stop?"

"No, he doesn't," someone else said at the doorway. The blonde girl from the clearing was there, looking irritated, swirling around an open water bottle with the cap in her other hand. "He kicked me when I tried to get some nectar down his throat."

"You were rather, er, _curt_ with him when you two did talk," Thalia pointed out dryly. "Personally, I can hardly blame him for kicking you."

"Ms. Thalia," Chiron said disapprovingly.

"I am twenty years old, mister, and I am a born and raised American. I have the right of speech," Thalia said sharply.

Annabeth was taking a swig of water from her bottle when Thalia said that. She choked and started coughing. When the coughing fit subsided, she wheezed out, "You're _twenty_?"

Thalia frowned at her. "Yeah, so?"

"Very few demigods make it to that age, let alone a child of the Big Three," Chiron explained.

"It was rough when Jason was small, but after a couple years it was fine," Thalia defended herself.

"How many monsters are you used to taking out?" Annabeth asked incredulously.

Thalia chewed on her lip, thinking about the question. "Before Percy, it was about half a dozen monsters a day. As Jason got older and Percy joined our group, that number has tripled."

Annabeth looked wary. "Is that on a good day or a bad day?"

Thalia shrugged. "That's about average, actually. It depends on where we are. In New England, normally about twenty to twenty-five monsters. In the Southeast, about ten. In the Midwest, about fifteen monsters a day. On the WesternCoast, it ranges from thirty monsters to a small army. In Canada, there are actually a lot of monsters, especially Hyperboreans, but most of them are peaceful. However, if one challenges you, they are worth five of the normal monsters in the US, like the gryphons. Those are next to impossible to kill."

Annabeth and Chiron exchanged startled glances.

"What?" Thalia asked. "Is that a lot?"

Annabeth snorted incredulously. "'Is that a lot?' she asks. On an extremely bad day, I get, at _most_, five monsters after me. Not _twenty_-five."

Thalia chewed on her lip. She'd never considered that her number would be much higher than other demigods'.

"Where am I?" she finally asked.

"You're at CampHalf-Blood. We're still in New York. It's on Long Island," Chiron said.

Thalia groaned something to the effect of, 'another gods-damned camp'. Annabeth looked confused, while Chiron was alarmed. "I'm allowed to leave, right?" Thalia said clearer.

"This is the safest place that you can be," Chiron assured her.

"I am allowed to leave, _correct_?" Thalia said, stressing the words.

Chiron looked taken aback. "Not normally, no. Only people who are going home for the school year, or if they're going on quests."

Thalia swore violently and ran a hand through her hair, making it even more spiky than usual.

"Why do you ask?" Chiron said calmly.

With a frustrated sigh, Thalia said, "We have some extremely bad experiences with camps. One of which was in California. They tried to persuade me to join, but they would've separated me from Percy and Jason, who were seven and six at the time. I told them to go hide in the woods, and their leader tried to take me by force. I sheared off the plume of his helmet as a warning shot, before running after Jason and Percy. That was the first. We've never gone into California again. I doubt my brothers have forgotten that."

Thalia's stomach growled loudly. She sheepishly put a hand on her stomach.

"Annabeth, could you get Thalia some food?" Chiron asked, mirth tingeing his voice.

Annabeth left the room, and Chiron rolled forward. "Do not mention the Romans to anyone in this camp, Thalia."

"I'm not _stupid_," Thalia snapped. "Although I am living proof that Romans and Greeks are able to get along. So are Percy and Jason."

"How?" Chiron demanded quietly. "You said that you went out fighting."

"My _brother_ is a son of Jupiter," Thalia hissed. "Percy, Jason, and I are all quite aware of that."

"Of course you would get along, he was raised with Greek influence!" Chiron said.

Thalia shook her head. "Jason is still quite Roman. Unless we've done some heavy-duty battling recently, he's always up at the crack of dawn. His instincts are hardwired for Roman techniques, like stabbing forward instead of slashing downward, like I taught him. He learned how to fly at six. I wasn't even aware we could until he did it. And even though Percy and Jason clash a lot, it's more from the fact that their personalities are too similar rather than the Greek/Roman feud."

"What feud?" Annabeth said, coming into the room holding a plate and a glass of water.

"I was telling Chiron that I thought that your mother was influencing you and Poseidon Percy from yesterday or from whenever we first met. You know, the Athena and Poseidon feud," Thalia said swiftly.

Annabeth groaned. "I never even thought of that. He just rubbed me the wrong way. I normally have a better handle on my Athenian side."

"Thanks," Thalia said as Annabeth handed her the plate and the glass. "And I know Percy normally isn't that rude. Only when he's extremely tired and hasn't had food in awhile. Then he gets pretty pushy." She chewed on her upper lip, lost in thought. "Then again, you accusing him of letting the girl and the monster fall off the cliff was probably a bad idea."

Annabeth's jaw tightened, but she didn't say anything. Thalia got up, still eating, and went around to check on her brother, lightly pressing a hand to his forehead. Jason wasn't as hot as Percy, but he was nowhere near normal. Thalia winced, feeling guilty that she couldn't have helped form the storm.

Jason stirred and weakly grabbed Thalia's hand. She set down her plate hurriedly and knelt next to him.

"Are the others okay?" he rasped, so quiet Thalia almost couldn't hear him.

"Percy's in the same state that you're in. Clarisse is still MIA, but everyone else is okay," Thalia said gently. "You did awesome, little brother."

Jason started coughing, horrible, guttural coughing. Thalia helped him sit up and she grabbed a bowl. Sure enough, as soon as Jason sat up, he vomited up muddy water.

Thalia shrugged helplessly. "At least it isn't green snot. I did that when I was sixteen."

Annabeth and Chiron seemed a little shocked.

Jason finally started dry-heaving, and Thalia shocked him to make his muscles relax. Jason hiccupped once and then sagged backwards, utterly exhausted. Thalia laid him back onto the bed.

"Where are we?" Jason asked softly.

"We're at a place called CampHalf-Blood. Apparently we're safe from monsters here."

Jason barked out a dry laugh. "Bullshit. We haven't been safe from monsters since I was two."

"No, little brother," Thalia said, mirth in her voice. "Since I was four."

Jason smiled wryly. "Sis?"

"Yeah?"

"Why is it so cold in here?"

Thalia smiled sadly. "It isn't cold, Jason. You're running a high fever from overdoing it."

Jason swallowed. "Oh."

"Do you want your jacket?" Thalia asked gently.

He nodded with difficulty. Thalia handed him his jacket—the very one she'd sacrificed for him, all those years ago—and helped him get it on. He sighed when he got it on, closing his eyes. Within thirty seconds, his breathing evened out and Thalia could tell that he was asleep.

Thalia slowly rose and grabbed her food again, scarfing it down quickly. When she finished, she asked bewilderedly, "Where's my spear? My bow and quiver? Where's Jason and Percy's weapons?"

Annabeth's eyes widened. Chiron looked amused. "Your little stint with the storm and lightning garnered several of the gods' attention. Zeus took it upon himself to reward you and your brother by helping you conceal your weapons. Not to be outdone, Poseidon also rewarded Percy with the same thing."

Chiron reached under a nightstand and pulled out a basket of seemingly random items: there was a mace canister, a pen, a coin, and some kind of pendant hanging from a leather cord. The man handed her the pendant and the mace canister, shrugging helplessly. "Annabeth tried to figure out how to turn these back into weapons. We believe these are yours, based on where they were."

Thalia warily grasped the two items, shoving the mace canister in her pocket and tying the pendant around her neck. On impulse, she tugged on the pendant absently, gasping a little as she felt no resistance but rather held her bow in her hand and a leather cord going diagonally across her chest. She twisted her head around in shock; she could feel the weight of her quiver, but she had to see it.

"One of the Hephaestus campers has something like that," Annabeth remarked, watching in interest. "Only it turns into a sword, not a bow and quiver. Let the bow drop, it'll probably turn back into a necklace."

Hesitantly, Thalia let her bow go, gravity taking hold of it. As soon as it left her hand, it vanished. Her hand flew to her neck, feeling the leather cord and the pendant.

"It only responds to you," Annabeth said, watching closely. "Huh. The maker was pretty smart."

"Don't inflate my dad's ego," Thalia warned, fiddling with the mace canister. "Out of the three of us, only one of us has a loving parent, and it definitely ain't me."

She yelped as she uncapped it and it grew into her spear.

"Most demigods don't get along with their parents," Annabeth said coolly.

"'Don't get along', as in, argue with them, or 'don't get along', as in, being abused by them?" Thalia asked distractedly, frowning at her spear.

Annabeth blinked in surprise.

"'Cuz trust me, girly, my mother only attracted Zeus because she was famous. She might've been nice to me, had she not known who Zeus was, but she did, and she pulled stupid stunts to get more famous, she got drunk, she beat me, treated me like a slave. I still have the scars on my back where she threw a beer bottle at me and it shattered against me," Thalia continued, testing the spear's weight apprehensively. "What did you do to this, Zeus? Anyway, why do you think I ran away with Jason? Technically, I should've waited until he could run without falling on his face, but had we been there any longer, she would've started to beat him, too. Or Jason would've been kidnapped by Hera, like she'd tried to do when I was asleep the first night that we ran away. I scared her to death by mentioning the prophecy and razing Olympus because she took my brother and I'd do anything to get him back. If she had, I would've, too, that's probably what scared the crap out of her."

Annabeth looked dumbfounded.

"All of us were abused," Thalia said gently, seeing Annabeth's face. "Or would've been, anyway. Jason wasn't, because I ran away, dragging him with me, for his protection. Percy's mother married a stinking drunk to cover up Percy's scent. It worked, too, until the monsters showed up and little six-year-old Percy ran all the way from Manhattan to New Jersey, somewhere in the South Mountain Reservation. A little under fifteen miles. A six-year-old kid with no endurance training. Gabe beat both Percy and Sally, the son of the sea and a woman with the patience of a saint who is kind enough to take us into her home when we need it. She's the mom I wish I had."

"She divorced this Gabe?" Chiron asked mildly.

Thalia nodded. "When we took Percy with us, we trained him to defend himself, and during that six months' time, Sally had gotten a divorce with Gabe. Gabe never saw Percy again." Thalia smirked at that last statement.

"A remarkable woman," Chiron mused.

Thalia began to pace in front of the boys' bed, unable to keep still.

* * *

The next eight hours consisted of Thalia alone with two sleeping, feverish boys, and Thalia alternately pacing and sitting on the bed beside one of the two boys. It was when she felt her brother's forehead for the sixteenth time (once every half hour) and felt that his temperature was normal, that Jason began to stir again, groaning. He sat up, rubbing his head.

"Gods, what _hit_ me?"

Thalia chuckled in relief. "You're feeling better?"

Jason blinked at her in disbelief. "Better compared to what? I feel like I just got hit with a Cyclops's club."

Thalia bit her lip. "You woke up eight hours ago, weaker than a newborn kitten, and when I help you sit up you barfed up muddy water and stomach acid, and according to you, you were freezing to death. To me, you were burning up from fever."

Jason shook his head slowly. "I don't remember any of that."

Thalia shrugged. "I don't blame you. I wouldn't want to remember that, either."

Her brother slid his legs out from underneath the covers. "What did I do to make me feel so _bad_?"

Thalia's heart sank. "You don't remember _any_ of the past three days? Not Nico and Bianca, or the Manticore, or you and Percy calling on the storm?"

"We're supposed to be on our way to Westover Hall, to collect Nico and Bianca," Jason said, confused.

Thalia groaned, and recounted what happened after that, what with the Manticore, the other demigods, and the helicopters.

Jason rubbed his head, thinking. His elbows were propped up on his knees, so he was slouching over when he rubbed his head.

"So where are we now? How long was I out?" Jason asked tiredly.

Thalia laughed bitterly. "We're at this place called CampHalf-Blood. Supposedly, it's a safe haven for demigods. I consider it a prison, since they apparently won't let us go unless we get assigned a quest—whatever that is—or if it's the end of summer. It's supposed to be a summer camp."

Jason made a face. "So they won't let us go until the end of summer? When does summer end?"

Thalia laughed delightedly as she realized something: "Its winter, Jason. I forgot because it's so warm here. We can leave whenever we want."

Jason smirked. Thalia resumed her pacing, stopping once to check Percy's forehead, whose fever was close to breaking.

"Oh," Thalia said, almost forgetting. She tossed Jason his coin. He caught it in surprise. "This is your _gladius_. Apparently we got the gods' attention with the storm and all the lightning. Zeus decided to reward us by concealing our weapons. Flip it; it changes into your sword. I have no idea what they did with your knife."

Jason pocketed the sword with a murmur of discontent.

"Don't worry, I wasn't too thrilled about it, either," Thalia said unhappily. She abided by the philosophy that if she won the magic item, awesome, if she won a weapon, awesome, but if the gods changed her weapons into magic items? That just defeated the purpose of flaunting trophies. Conquering weapons from monsters was like avenging the demigods that the monsters had defeated. Changing the weapons was like replacing them with a whole new weapon with no history, no previous owner. There was no pride or satisfaction, or the rush of adrenaline as you struggled to turn your enemy's weapon against itself. Nothing. Her bow—the one she crafted over a decade ago—might as well have been remade by foreign hands. And she hated it.

"We'll get plenty of chances to replace the weapons," Jason assured her, seeing her look of anguish. "Until then, we'll make do."

"I've always wanted to try out hunting knives, see how those work for me," Thalia mused. "Some of the werewolves have them."

"Let's get some silver before we go charging after them," Jason advised, his voice shaking with mirth.

"It'd be more satisfactory if we just fried them all," Thalia disagreed.

Jason shrugged, watching his sister pace. "Personally, I was happy with my _gladius_, but I'd like to try a Greek sword, like Percy's."

Thalia uncapped Percy's pen experimentally. Nothing amazing happened. She slashed the pen like one would with a sword, and it expanded suddenly, like it was shot from the inside, or it needed the centrifugal force for it to expand. Thalia tossed the sword to Jason, who caught it by the hilt. Thalia adjusted her position into a battle stance, bare-handed. Jason eyed her warily.

"What are you doing?"

Thalia shrugged. "We can't wake up Percy, and this'll be more of a challenge for me. I've been basically doing nothing for the past eight hours; I want to take it out on someone."

Her brother grinned in appreciation and swiftly attacked.

Jason swiped low, towards Thalia's ankles, and she jumped over the blade. He changed direction, going straight up, and she bent sideways, lifting her arm so that it looked like she was stretching out her left side. Metal flashed, and Thalia danced out of the way of the blade, grinning. Jason slashed upwards, and she somehow managed to backflip out of the way and land silently on her feet. Jason retreated, his eyebrows raised.

Thalia laughed. "I didn't know I could do that!"

"Your powers probably helped you out," Jason guessed. "Like me with jumping."

Thalia rolled her eyes. "You're a freaking _kangaroo_ when you jump."

Jason snickered at her terminology, and started attacking again.

He jabbed at her abdomen in a very Roman maneuver, and it showed, because Thalia was very nearly skewered by the blade. He brought Riptide down in a diagonal line, and Thalia flipped upward, utilizing her new skill, and came down feet-first on top of the blade, slamming it out of Jason's hands. Thalia jumped up, grabbed the blade out from underneath herself, and held it at Jason's throat, smirking.

"You did good, little bro," she said proudly.

There was some slow clapping. The siblings looked up to see Chiron and Annabeth in the doorway, and Percy sitting up on the bed, blinking.

"You two are really interesting to listen to," he said, laughing a little. "All I get are these little snippets of conversation and whooshes from the blade."

Thalia laughed at Percy. "How long were you awake?"

Percy grimaced. "More like simply conscious. About half an hour. I think. It's hard to tell."

Thalia winced. "You remember anything?"

The son of the sea winced. "Pain. Wetness. I remember the Manticore a little bit. Then it feels like my soul was being sucked out of my body forcibly without me dying."

"That's you draining yourself to make that storm," Chiron explained.

Percy did a double take at Chiron and Annabeth. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

"Probably not," Chiron said smoothly, rolling farther into the room. "My name is Chiron."

"Like the teacher of the Heroes of Old," Percy said slowly.

Chiron smiled a little under his beard. "Yes, very much like that."

Thalia leaned over to Percy, "I think he _is_ Chiron, Percy. He never told us, and I frankly haven't a clue on how he's still alive, but even so…"

Percy's fingers flattened on his leg, signaling that he got it.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"We're at a place called CampHalf-Blood. Apparently, it's a safe haven for demigods. No monsters," Jason said, futilely attempting to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

Percy turned around to stare at Thalia. "He isn't serious? What about the _last_ Camp we ran into?"

"If they try to keep us here I'll shock the daylights out of them like I did last time," Thalia reassured him.

Chiron chuckled. Jason looked at him like he was nuts. "There is a counselor's meeting in twenty minutes. We'd like you to join us."

"Because you want to influence us into joining your Camp?" Thalia asked dryly.

"Not only that, but you also may have seen or heard something that Annabeth, Luke, and Grover did not," Chiron agreed.

Thalia looked taken aback. She had fully expected him to deny it. She looked at the boys. Jason's sword dipped. Percy tapped his fingers, seemingly thoughtfully. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap. _Tell only what we're asked of._

"We'll come," Thalia said resignedly.

* * *

Thalia could hear the demigods on the other side of the door talking noisily. She looked back at the two male demigods behind her.

"Let's get this over with," Percy said on her left.

"Might as well," Jason agreed.

Thalia pushed open the door, and the entire room fell silent. Thalia strode in, her eyes guarded and head held high. Jason and Percy followed her, their hands in their pockets, ready to take out their weapons at any time.

She recognized Annabeth, seated in one of the chairs. On Annabeth's right there was a girl who looked like a Persian princess. On Annabeth's left, there was a girl with dark-brown hair and grass-green eyes. On the other side of the Persian princess there was a beautiful girl with long, raven black hair and bright blue eyes. At the end of that row there was a blond-haired boy with purpley-blue eyes.

Thalia seated herself at the head of the ping-pong table, Jason and Percy on her right and left. It was a pattern they had always fallen into: Thalia in front, Jason behind her on Thalia's right, Percy also behind her but on Thalia's left. All three of them knew that the configuration would most likely change soon, so they decided to savor it while it lasted.

"Right," Chiron said. "Demigods, this is Thalia, Jason, and Percy, all of them children of the Big Three."

Instant. Pandemonium.

Thalia watched the yells of shock and people leaping to their feet and protesting with a little bit of amusement. Jason and Percy's expressions didn't really change all that much. Maybe they were just a little bit in shock.

Thalia brought up her hands and slammed them together with the sound of a crack of thunder. The effect was immediate, as the group of demigods fell into silence.

The green-eyed girl next to Annabeth spoke up first. "Thalia looks old enough to be the person in the prophecy that no one but Annabeth has heard. War doesn't seem to be immediately looming. What's going on?"

Chiron opened his mouth, but Thalia beat him to it. "A valid question, but apparently not one for me, as I am twenty. In my limited experience, prophecies are never wrong, it is just a simple matter of when it happens and how it plays out. The prophecy could apply to four other known people, all of whom are at this Camp."

Mutters broke out.

"The newbies that arrived here yesterday or whenever we arrived here are called Bianca and Nico di Angelo, and they are children of Hades," Thalia calmly spoke over the quiet noise.

Gasps and more mutters.

"How did you know that?" Annabeth asked, a little bit shocked. "We only knew that they were strong."

"I was charged with a quest from Hades to retrieve his children, train them, and keep them generally safe," Percy said flatly. "Unlike you and I, many people are unfair against children of Hades, believing them to be dark and unfriendly and most often times, crazy. Hades wanted the three of us to keep them away from that."

"He has a point," Sherman—the son of Ares filling in for Clarisse—grudgingly admitted. "I could never believe that Nico kid is a son of Hades. He's too annoying."

Thalia cracked a grin. "Sounds about right for a ten-year-old child of the Big Three."

"I wasn't that bad!" Percy protested.

"Oh, yes you were," Thalia promised. "I was about ready to wring your neck by the time August came around again. You asked _way_ too many questions. Questions that were absolutely _pointless_, I might add."

"'How do I hold a sword' is not a pointless question," Percy exclaimed.

"That was when you were six, when you were ten you were trying not to shoot yourself in the eye with my bow and arrows," Thalia said dryly. "Artemis herself couldn't teach you how to shoot."

Out of the corner of her eye, Thalia could see Annabeth facepalm.

"How long have you three been together?" the purpley-eyed boy asked curiously.

"Six years," they answered simultaneously. "A decade if it was just Jason and me," Thalia added.

"He hardly looks twelve!" Luke exclaimed.

Jason rolled his eyes. "That's because I _am_. I turned twelve in July."

"You're right," Thalia agreed. "I was ten and Jason was two."

Luke and Annabeth exchanged startled glances across the room. "We had three teenagers and a seven-year-old in our midst, and we could hardly survive. How did you do it?" Luke said slowly.

"I carried him for a year and a half," Thalia said dryly. "By the time Jason was seven he already knew how to use a short sword, a spear, and bow and arrows if he had to. And we helped train Percy, who we'd had for a year and a half by then."

Sherman eyed Jason, looking a bit impressed. Then he looked at Thalia, wondering if she was the one who trained her brother.

"But I digress. Weren't we supposed to be talking about Westover Hall?" Thalia continued.

"Which is undergoing repairs," someone muttered. Thalia couldn't tell who.

"That may be so, but would you rather have had the demigods in that clearing slaughtered or would you rather a building having to do repairs?" Thalia snapped. "From what I can gather, you sent some of your most experienced demigods to Westover Hall: Luke, Clarisse, and Annabeth, and then you had five Big Three kids in that clearing. Unlike you, we were actually charged with a mission to get the di Angelo kids to safety. If it had gone worse than it already had, ending with the slaughter of eight or nine demigods, Hades automatically would've come down on _your_ heads. Trust me, we've been hunted by Hades. He makes being a Big Three kid look like a piece of cake."

Percy grimaced and rubbed his left thigh in remembrance.

"Despite popular opinion, we're not bulletproof," Jason muttered. "Although that'd make life a lot easier."

Dead silence as people realized the severity of the situation.

"You said war isn't looming in the horizon," Percy said suddenly, looking at the girl with green eyes next to Annabeth. "Before we went into the entryway, the Manticore was raving about some great stir pot or something like that. He had a master that was intent on raising the ancient monsters from the Pit. I don't think you heard it, Thalia, because I was in front of you. War may not be coming, but hard times are."

"No, war is coming," Annabeth spoke up. "I don't think you're aware of recent events. A guy named Ethan Naukamura is sailing around on a cruise ship. Luke nearly got killed twice on that ship."

Thalia raised her eyebrows. "And? I don't understand. Is this guy a demigod? Is he in cahoots with monsters?"

Annabeth frowned. "Yes, he's a demigod. Not monster, per se, but a more apt description is your grandfather."

Thalia visibly paled. "Godly or mortal side?" she asked, while thinking, _oh gods, please let it be my mortal side…_

"Godly," Annabeth said, looking apologetic.

Thalia groaned and buried her head in her hands. "How fast is he reforming?" she asked, muffled.

"Very fast."

"Have any others escaped their prisons?"

"Not that we know of," she answered swiftly.

"How much time do we have?"

"Uncertain."

"Crap," Thalia swore, rubbing her head. "Does anybody else have a majorly important problem?" she asked sarcastically. "Maybe the Python is rising, coming to guard the Oracle again. Or no, better yet, some ancient sea monsters are stirring!"

Percy nudged her. "That's already happening. Father is sealing their prisons more tightly."

"Clarisse is MIA," Sherman remarked, ignoring Thalia's sarcasm.

"I'm still working on how to fix that problem," Thalia admitted. "And Percy, you didn't tell me that, or I wouldn't have mentioned it."

"I believe milady is lost," the Persian princess said somberly.

Thalia blinked in surprise. "I'm sorry, I just came here. Who are you?"

She nodded. "My name is Zoë Nightshade, Huntress of Artemis."

"Lost?" Percy asked. "As in needing directions?"

"As in, MIA," Thalia explained quickly before Zoë could open her mouth with a biting retort. "Kidnapped. Disappeared. Vanished off of the face of the earth."

"She told us to come hither—to thy camp," Zoë continued. "She said that her mission was too dangerous for her sisters."

"What was she hunting?" Thalia asked urgently.

Zoë pursed her lips. "The bane of the gods."

Thalia arched an eyebrow. "So she, one of the gods, went after this creature, without backup, without others knowing where she was? I mean no disrespect towards your mistress, but that is foolish for what she is hunting."

Zoë frowned at Thalia. "If thee had been any other, I most likely would've fired," she admitted. "However, I said as much to milady as well. And now she is gone."

Thalia leaned forward. "How did you find out?"

Zoë blinked. "By thee's what-you-call demigod dreams. She is in shackles."

Thalia's jaw clenched, and she got up and began to pace, running a hand through her hair. "Where is she? Could you tell?"

Zoë's already dark eyes darkened further as she thought. "It was a dark mountain top. The mountain seemed to be carved into horrible figures, formed of black rock." She shuddered. "It fairly reeked of evil."

Percy's eyes widened. "Was it in partial ruins filled with mist?"

Thalia's eyes shot to the son of Poseidon, surprised.

"Yes," Zoë said warily.

"I know where she is," Percy said with finality. "MountTam, aka, MountOthyrus, found in California."

Jason leaned over Thalia's empty seat to whisper, "How did you know that?"

"Tell you later," he whispered back.

Their conversation was lost in the murmuring of the other demigods.

"Wait a second. How on earth can we trust them?" a voice spoke over all of them. A son of Apollo eyed them suspiciously. "Let's do a recount here: five demigods show up in one day—that in and of itself is unusual—and then they all turn out to be _Big Three kids_? One of them shouldn't be alive, frankly, and one of them could start the prophecy that the gods themselves are afraid of launching. Have we covered all that? Good. What about Clarisse disappearing, Artemis being captured, Ethan on the loose in his horrid cruise ship, and now this news about some new master intent on stirring the most ancient monsters from their depths? If _that_ doesn't sound like the start of a war, I don't know what does."

Percy shrugged, unperturbed. "He has a point. They have no reason to trust us."

"Percy!"

"What? It's true! The only thing that we've brought to them is trouble!"

Thalia threw up her hands. "You think I haven't already realized that!

"I just said that, you know, to other demigods, we only bring trouble and monsters! You were the one who said that that was the reason for even letting me into this group, because I probably would've caused absolute chaos if Mom put me in Camp!" Percy defended. "You were the one who said that Camp would just treat me like some gods-forsaken savior! Instead, you didn't tell me, but I got it! You would treat me like family. And you have. And I hope to any just, higher power out there that I returned the favor, because frankly, you didn't _have_ to take in a six-year-old kid with no idea how to hold a sword or summon a bit of water."

"Percy—"

"_Shut up,_ Thalia," Percy raged. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were allergic to compliments!"

Someone burst into laughter. The two cousins glared at each other, not noticing the laughter.

Thalia gave up and walked out without a word, leaving the stifling rec room behind.

* * *

People were laughing and cheering and wincing in the arena when Thalia walked in. She took herself a seat—of which almost all were filled—and asked the person next to her, "What's going on?"

The stranger took a short look at her. "Newbie?" he asked.

Thalia nodded.

He smiled. "Chris Rodriguez, son of Hermes. Bewarned, my brothers like to pickpocket anything of value on you."

"I am warned," Thalia said, smiling a little. "Thalia. I came in a couple days ago."

Chris did a double take at her face. "You were one of the unconscious kids!"

Thalia grimaced. "Great, I have a reputation."

"Do you know if my girlfriend is okay?" Chris asked.

"If you count tired, subdued, and shackled _okay_. She has a few scratches, but nothing seems too wrong with the daughter of Ares," Thalia said lowly.

Chris sagged in relief. He pointed at the empty spot in the middle. "In there, is the most skilled person in the camp that has the guts to get up there. It ranges from the children of Ares to the children of Athena, with a few others thrown in. They fight any who challenge them, and if they win, they stay in. If they lose, the challenger stays in the arena until he or she loses. If Annabeth and Clarisse were here, it would normally end in a draw or an extremely close match. If they get tired of fighting, they can forfeit their position to the most skilled person they matched, assuming that they're conscious."

Thalia made a queer face. "It almost sounds like gladiator fighting."

"There are rules, and it's completely voluntary," Chris assured her. "No maiming and no killing, and the losers are not allowed to stab their defeater in the back."

Thalia didn't know if he was kidding or not. "What's your weapon?"

Chris patted his sheath. "Sword. I'm nothing special with it, but I've survived with my skills. You?"

"I normally prefer my spear," Thalia admitted. "Although I'm a good shot as well. Who's up there?"

Chris shrugged. "Marcus, son of Ares. He has an ego as big as the great outdoors, although he's fourth only to Annabeth, Clarisse, and Luke when it comes to weapons fighting. He's been taken down before by others, but they had to pull some extreme stuff."

"I've been on my own with two boys to take care of for a little over a decade," Thalia said with mirth filling her voice. "I'll give you ten bucks if I can't beat him."

"You don't _have_ ten bucks," Chris said, raising an eyebrow as a challenge.

Thalia brushed it off. "I guess that means that I'll win."

The previous contestant was being helped off the immediate battlefield.

"_Who else would like to challenge me?!_" someone yelled in the center. There were some laughs at his drama, but it felt like the arena was holding its breath.

Chris smirked at Thalia. "I'll take that bet, Thalia."

"May I borrow your sword?" Thalia asked. He smirked and unsheathed the weapon and handed it to her, hilt first. Thalia grinned mischievously at him, and as she stood up, her face changed. Instead of being light and playful, it was a stern expression with a hint of pride and challenge. "I will challenge you, Marcus, son of Ares."

Now that she could see the guy, she could tell that this would be a short fight. He was all brawn and no brains. Maybe he had skills and instincts, but wouldn't be able to judge how fast she was going or how hard she was going to hit, let alone be able to see which way her muscles were tensing so that he knew where she was going.

Marcus laughed outright as he saw how short she was. By demigod standards, she was miniscule. Most of the girls were five-seven at shortest, and she was five-four. She blinked calmly, accepting that laughter as another challenge. She swiftly moved to the center of the arena, aware, but not daunted, by the many people watching her every step, weighing the sword in her hand curiously. It was a comfortable weight, but unbalanced slightly, and it was smoothed out, yes, but not by her own hands.

She faced Marcus, the sword in her hand hanging loosely, waiting for him to strike first.

He did. Marcus went for a powerful overhead arc that Thalia neatly sidestepped. Metal rang against stone as the sword clanged off of the hard surface. He sliced towards her legs, and she hopped over the sword as if she were jumping rope. Marcus slashed diagonally towards her, and only then did she lift her sword with her right hand, catching the blade between the base of her blade and her hilt.

"Don't go easy on me," Thalia said dryly. "I came looking for a fight, and I got a high recommendation."

Then she kicked his feet out from under him to emphasize her point. She waited for him to get up patiently. He lay at her feet, stunned.

Faster than she thought was possible for a boy of his size, he lurched upwards, clenching his sword and made as though to slice her in half like that nursery tale of the witch and the woodcutter. She met his strike with Chris's sword, both hands wrapped around the hilt.

"Much better," she muttered. "Now I know how far I can go."

She promptly kicked him solidly in the chest, showing off as she used her momentum from the reaction to go into a backflip and landed on her feet, skidding to a stop in the dusty stone floor. Thalia brought up her sword to deflect an overhead cleave, altered the direction by a minute amount, and sliced off a fringe of hair. She twirled around him gracefully, slashing at his leather armor straps, freeing him of the weight.

"You move too slowly with that armor on," she informed him. "C'mon! I thought you were good!"

They circled each other, Marcus now infinitely more wary of Thalia. "Where did you train?"

She shrugged. "Oddly enough, I stole moves from monsters who had stolen them from defeated demigods. I've been on my own for ten years, had to learn how to defend myself somehow."

"Ten years," he repeated grimly. "Damn."

Thalia laughed at him.

"It can't hurt to try, no?" he asked.

Thalia shrugged. "It depends on how frustrated I am with the world. Right now I'm _very_ frustrated, so it really sucks for you."

She dropped Chris's sword altogether and stepped inside Marcus's strike, mercilessly slamming the heel of her palm into his solar plexus. He tried to strike at her with the sword, amongst some gasps and screams, and she jumped up in the narrow space and pushed her feet into his solid chest, propelling herself over and away from the strike. She landed on her back that was curved as she was curled up in a ball and somersaulted backwards, ending the two-second process in a Spiderman-like position, Marcus sprawled and gasping, laughing a little. She gave him a questioning look, and he gave her a thumbs up while trying to catch his breath.

She walked back to Chris and handed him his sword, hilt first. "Here's your sword. I expect my ten bucks by tomorrow morning."

His face was priceless. Thalia heard that insufferable _click_ behind her. "Percy, put _up_ the camera already, gods!"

"I'm sorry, his face was too good to resist," Percy said sheepishly.

Chris took his sword after a long moment, and sheathed it. "I gave you your weapon back, now give me mine," she added calmly, holding out her hand.

He sighed. "But really? Pepper spray?" Chris tossed her the mace canister.

She caught it deftly and uncapped it. It transformed into her old spear. She held it out for Chris to inspect. "My spear that I told you about," she said, smirking. "Not pepper spray."

It collapsed into its container and Thalia capped it. "What did they decide?"

"As far as I know, they're still arguing," Percy said wryly. "I gave up after another ten minutes in there. Jason's wandering around the woods, I think. He might be divebombing some of the Hermes kids, though."

Thalia grinned at him appreciatively.

"THERE'S A BLOND BIRD ATTACKING ME!" someone screamed outside of the arena.

Percy burst into laughter. "Yeah, he's definitely divebombing the Hermes kids."

* * *

**Ruby: *jaw drops* Well, people, I'm proud and kind of shocked to say that we have over 200 views, 22 favorites, 24 followers, and 17 reviews (last I checked, anyway)! Wow, you people must really like this story, jeez.**

**Okay, yeah, technically it's the weekend for me, since I finished my homework, so I posted this early! Don't expect me to make three chapters this long, though, that isn't possible for me. I'll post another long chapter like this Sunday morning, capice?**

**Next chapter, the ball gets rolling with Capture the Flag turning into the Trojan War remake, Annabeth makes an attempt to stab Percy, Percy decides to show just how much power he may or may not hold, prophecies are given, people are sought out, and Nico and Bianca get a feel for the trio. So yeah, your average day.**


	4. Hal

**mom: Uh, sorry, yeah, there are going to be couples: JasonxBianca, PercyxAnnabeth, ThaliaxLuke, FrankxHazel when they come in, probably some eventual OOC!PiperxNico...yeah, pretty crazy. Sorry if that disappointed you. And also, your username gave me a pause...why do you call yourself 'mom'?**

* * *

Thalia gaped at all the armor that they had to wear. "Do we _really_ need all this?" she asked disbelievingly to Chris.

Chris bit his lip thoughtfully, studying Thalia. "You actually might not need it, unless someone put you with a group, and they are going to send that group out as a distraction team. Then it's better to be safe than sorry."

"I don't know how to fight with this on," Thalia said flatly. "And if things get desperate I can erect my own kind of armor."

Chris shrugged. "It's your limbs."

"I thought you said that there were rules!"

"Accidents happen," Chris said flatly. "Besides, you should feel lucky that you even got to play this game. The Big Three kids were almost excluded because you tip the balance in our favor."

"And watch us lose this game anyway because I haven't got a clue how to play it," Thalia grumbled.

Chris laughed. "Somehow, I highly doubt it. Where do you think Percy will be?"

Thalia gave him an incredulous look. "I'm sorry, Chris, have you noticed that he's a son of the sea? That he can control water, maybe? If Annabeth's at all smart, she put him as the border patrol."

Chris held up his hands. "Hey, I'm still just trying to get my head wrapped around the fact that you've survived long enough to be twenty, and you're a Big Three kid, and you've been without the safety of the Camp for all of your life. Sorry if I'm a little slow when it comes to obvious stuff."

"Nah," someone else said teasingly.

"He's like that all the time," his partner assured her.

The two that had cut into their conversation were boys that were almost identical, except one was a little taller than the other. They both wore the traditional Hermes mischievous smirk with a raised eyebrow. She held out her hand patiently. "My ten dollars and my mace canister."

The two boys looked at each other, wide-eyed. "We didn't—"

"—steal anything!"

Thalia pulled on her pendant around her neck and nocked two arrows. "Let's try this again. My ten dollars and my mace canister."

They both reluctantly shoved the items back to her. Thalia unstrung her bow and let it drop, collecting her things. "Thank you," she said politely. "I am Thalia, daughter of Zeus."

"Travis—"

"—and Conner—"

"Stoll! Sons of Hermes."

"But you probably already figured that out," Chris said dryly. "These two are more commonly referred to as the Stolls."

Thalia chuckled. "Stoll. An ironic name for sons of Mer—Hermes." _Damnit, Thalia, you've been hanging out with Jason too much,_ Thalia internally berated herself.

They looked at her blankly.

Thalia groaned. "Oh, come _on_. Your last name, Stoll? And then the word, _stole_. As in, the past-tense of steal."

Chris leaned over to her. "It's a common joke among newbies and some of the other cabins, but it's such an old one to the Hermes cabin that it isn't funny any more."

"Oh," Thalia said, shrugging sheepishly. "Sorry."

"So are you wearing the armor or not?" Chris asked.

Thalia shook her head. "I have no idea how to move around in those, and frankly I doubt that I could run."

"At least get a shield," Chris said disapprovingly.

"I could snowboard on those just fine, but I don't think I can lift one for a long period…"

Thalia stared at the snow around her.

Chris looked a little alarmed. "Thalia?"

She grinned at him. "They'll never see it coming."

He gulped. "I don't like that look."

* * *

"Remember, they're counting on a small fleet of enemies coming at them," Thalia said. "They're getting seven, high-velocity enemies that are going to plow into their shields and break them apart. Then the rest of us charge down there and take them to prison. Then that group is going to split up and—" she snapped her fingers, "_vanish_. Got it?"

"That's a crazy plan," Chris said wryly.

"Don't worry, I've got another one for getting past Percy," Thalia assured him. She hefted one of her shields onto her arm and readied herself for jumping onto the other shield. "Remember, try to keep in a wedge formation as much as possible. Ready?"

The group of seven that consisted of Thalia, Marcus, Chris, Bianca, Silena, and the Stolls all nodded.

Thalia tensed. "Go!"

She jumped onto her snowboard-slash-shield and pushed off. She skidded down the slope at demigod-smashing speed. She readied the shield on her arm, bracing herself, while balancing on the shield under her. The people she was aiming for just stood there, stunned, as she and six others hurtled down the hill.

She rammed into the line, knocking two of them down and sending the rest of them stumbling from the force of the impact. Six more thuds happened in quick succession, and more people fell over. Thalia drew her spear, twirled it, gaining momentum, and smacked the butt of the spear against someone's helmet. They sank back into the snow, out cold.

Thalia looked up. All of them were subdued and sporting bruises. "Get them to the prison. Tell the others that we got by the first barrier."

They scattered into the forest, hauling their prisoners with them. Wind whirled over the spot, leaving no trace of any battle, and Thalia trooped towards the creek, a lone set of footprints in the snow.

When she got there, she had to do a double take. There was a solid block of ice three times as high as she was and spanning farther than she could see. The others had already arrived. She could just barely see Percy through the ice. He grinned cheekily at her and waved.

"Jason," she called. "He's on the other side. Distract him, please."

Jason grinned and took a running start, leaping off the ground ten feet away from the huge block of ice. He slammed into it, but he grabbed ahold of the top ledge, and pulled himself up, running across the top. Thalia could see him jump down and land just in front of Percy.

Beckendorf inspected the block of ice curiously. Then he drew a hammer—a hammer nearly identical to the one that Thalia had confiscated from a monster a decade ago—and slammed it against the ice. Spiderwebs of cracks crawled along the ice. Beckendorf brought his hammer down on the same spot with more force. Ice chips flew, and the cracks expanded and went further, crawling deeper into the ice. Bianca wedged her knife into one of the cracks and pulled downwards, lifting her feet off the ground. All of a sudden it burst into flame, melting the ice instantly, and Bianca fell to the ground unexpectedly.

"What the crap?!" Chris said, bewildered, running over to Bianca.

"Big Three kid," Thalia said dryly. "Weird things tend to happen around us. May I see your hammer, Beckendorf?"

He warily handed it to her. "I'd recommend that you get Bianca a bit farther away from the block of ice, Chris."

Bianca stumbled to her feet and backed away on her own, Chris following her.

Thalia weighed the hammer in her hand, and the brought it down in a crushing overhead blow, lightning crackling through it. It hit the ice with a deafening _clang_, and then all of a sudden they could hear the lightning tearing through the ice with ruthless force. Thalia handed Beckendorf his hammer.

With an amused smile, he simply poked the mutilated ice block in front of him, and it all came crashing down, exposing the duel between Percy and Jason.

Everyone that wasn't guarding the flag charged through the hole in the enemy's defense. Jason and Percy continued to duke it out, although Percy tried to break away once to fix the barrier.

"So was that really your plan to distract Percy?" Chris panted.

"Some of it was used," Thalia told him. "Jason went over the ice to distract Percy so that Beckendorf's hammer didn't just clang off of it harmlessly."

"Is that even possible?" Chris asked.

Thalia looked at him. "With Percy's ice? Yes."

* * *

Percy yelled with frustration that he was matched strike for strike by Jason, neither of which were gaining ground nor tiring. He wouldn't normally care, enjoying the exercise, but now he had people counting on him to keep the barrier safe.

He heard a yell and turned towards it, ducking under Jason's sword. Thalia and Jason's team came charging over the hill, the Red Team's flag in hand. The Red Team themselves followed them, trying to get back their flag, but Thalia hopped onto her shield and snowboarded down the hill at high speed, the flag fluttering. The shield hit the half-melted water of the creek, skipped like a heavy stone once, and catapulted Thalia into the air where she landed with an ungraceful _poof_ into the snow on safe ground.

Jason twirled his _gladius_ and it shrank into the gold coin.

Annabeth, her stormy grey eyes visible even under her helmet, marched up to Percy and smacked him with an armored hand. "You said they wouldn't get by you! That you didn't _need help_!"

Percy's eyes flashed. "Well I'm _sor-ree_ that I didn't know that lightning could crack solid ice into bits the size of my thumbnail! If you couldn't tell, I was facing off with Jason, Thalia was taking down my barrier, and somehow Bianca blasted through half of it! Give me a _break_!"

"You're such a _Seaweed Brain_!" Annabeth screamed at him. "You _knew_ the odds!"

"Well sorry, I'm not a know-it-all!" Percy shot back. "Unlike you, I've dueled with Thalia and Jason, and I expected Nico and Bianca to have no clue how to use their powers, like I was when I first found out! I thought I could handle it! Not all of us are such…such _Wise Girls_!"

"That's not even an insult!"

"It is if you don't value the so-called _wisdom_ coming from the person's mouth!"

Jason facepalmed.

"Are you calling me stupid?!"

"Yes,_ Wise Girl_, I am," Percy snapped. "You fail to notice that I went by the information that I gathered and made my move based on that information. Apparently, I'm at least partly human, _because I made a mistake_! So shut the Hades up already!"

"You've traveled with them for what, six years?! You should know what Thalia is capable of!" Annabeth yelled in his face.

"If we full-out battled between us, not only would we destroy the surrounding area, but also kill each other!" Percy screamed at her.

"You would've seen what she did against the monsters!"

"No monster has lasted longer than ten seconds against Thalia in the past six years! How on _earth_ am I supposed to notice what she does when I'm occupied with my own monsters?!"

Thalia sighed and dragged a hand down her face, resisting the urge to cover up her ears to block out the pointless argument.

"It's not my fault that you're unobservant!" Annabeth yelled defensively.

"'You're unobservant,' said the pot to the kettle," Percy narrated snarkily.

"I am too observant!"

"Then explain to me why Bianca's knife erupted into flames! Explain to me why Beckendorf's hammer blasted through every one of my defenses! Explain to me why you and I rub each other the wrong way! Explain to me _why we're even having this POINTLESS ARGUMENT_?!"

Percy was finally pushed to the limit as the half-melted creek began to swirl with dangerous intent, doubling in on itself, rising higher and higher until it formed the approximation of an icy waterspout.

"Percy!" Thalia pleaded, trying to prevent him from doing something he regretted to the daughter of Athena.

Movement caught his attention, and the entire world froze. The creek splashed back into its bed.

Annabeth turned around, startled and slightly intimidated. She'd been fairly sure that Percy had been ready to smash her to a pulp. Now what was going on?

A girl walked into the clearing full of demigods, shrouded in green mist, moving oddly jerkily. She walked directly up to Percy, who gasped when he realized that he wasn't looking at a little girl about Nico's age, he was looking at her corpse. She was a hollowed mummy, devoid of all water except the moisture collected from walking through the snow.

She opened her mouth, and her voice sounded like that snake off of the first Harry Potter movie:

_Many to go west to free the goddess in chains  
She who holds power, her power be waned  
The scourge of Olympus will lead you to the trail  
Campers, strangers, and Hunters combined prevail  
The Titan's Curse must one withstand  
And five to venture into no man's land_

And she slumped down on the boulder like she intended to sit there for another hundred years.

Percy's face was as white as the snow that surrounded him. He knelt in the snow to steady himself and to prevent himself from falling over.

Thalia ran over to Percy, kneeling next to him, her own hands shaking. "Gods, Percy. You get yourself into the strangest situations."

"Don't I know it," Percy responded. "Gods, I hated that."

Knowing what he was referring to when he said _that_, Thalia chuckled.

* * *

After an extremely long counselor's meeting of deciding who to take on the quest, Thalia, Jason, and Percy were shown to their cabins, while Chiron debated on where to let the di Angelo children sleep.

(Percy snuck them with him when he went to his cabin.)

About an hour after they were sent to their cabins, Percy sneaked into the Zeus cabin to check up on his cousins, who, he found, were settling down in marble alcoves. The jumped and grabbed their weapons when the door creaked open.

"I've got actual beds and a bathroom," Percy told them dryly.

"We aren't allowed in each other's cabins," Jason pointed out.

Percy rolled his eyes. "Since when have rules stopped us? Heck, our very life is breaking an oath. Besides, I've already got the di Angelo siblings bunking with me."

Jason shrugged and picked up his stuff, Thalia following shortly thereafter.

Percy led the way back to the cabins, sneaking past the patrol of harpies fluttering clumsily by, his cousins immediately behind him. He opened the Poseidon cabin's door silently and nearly got torched.

"What the _crap_, Bianca?!" Percy whisper-yelled, patting out his smoking hair.

"Percy! Gods!" she said, sounding relieved. "You looked creepy."

Thalia and Jason came up behind Percy.

"Eh…now you look like you have three heads."

"Nico!"

"Well, doesn't he? I mean, come on, he can do loads of other cool stuff, why not have three heads as well?"

Thalia mouthed to Percy, _Exactly like you._

Percy looked insulted. Jason snickered.

He shut the door behind Thalia and Jason swiftly and silently as possible. Fire flickered into existence. Thalia yelped.

"Relax," Bianca said, her voice sounding strained. "I'm practicing."

"Yeah, practicing on scaring the crap out of me," Thalia muttered.

"I'm the one with the highest record of scaring the crap out of her," Jason informed them.

"Yes, because you've been with her the longest," Percy argued. "I've almost topped you."

"You aren't even close to me," Jason said smugly.

"I am too!" Percy said indignantly. "Your score is one hundred and ninety-two, mine is one hundred and seventy-four."

"And that is three hundred and sixty-six times more than I needed to be terrified on your behalves," Thalia interjected dryly, setting her stuff down on a lower bunk and then sitting on the bed. Jason jumped onto the one above her and sat with his legs crossed, peering at Bianca, who was watching the flames intensely.

"That'll be useful, if we ever have to travel in a dark area, and it doesn't drain you too much," Jason commented.

"It doesn't drain me all that much," Bianca admitted. "It just takes a lot of concentration, which is just as tiring."

Jason held up two fingers, adding to the light with his own blue-white light from the lightning crackling between his fingers, grinning.

Thalia looked up. "You've been able to do that since you were two."

Jason looked at her dryly. "I probably had a good teacher."

Thalia smiled dryly at the compliment and held up her own two fingers, also crackling with electricity. With a boom the equivalent of someone dropping a textbook onto the floor, the cabin lit up as lightning passed between the two siblings.

There was silence as the three cousins created their own source of light in the dark cabin.

"I like this cabin," Jason finally said. "You don't have a creepy buff hippie staring at you."

The rest of them burst into laughter, and Jason smiled. "No, seriously. That statue of Greek Dad is like, _respect me or eat voltage_, even though it's just a statue."

"Wait, what?" Nico asked, bewildered. "What do you mean, 'Greek Dad'?"

Thalia looked at the windows, which were sealed shut, and then told the two children of Hades about the Civil War, about Hera, about Jason, and about the other demigods in California.

Bianca's flame flickered to nearly nothing, just a blue wisp of heat, from her shock. "So this information could start another war? Why are you telling us?!"

"Because," Percy said before Thalia could open her mouth. "You're daughter and son of Hades."

"Hades is one of the Big Three," Jason said. "And there's so few of Big Three kids anymore."

Thalia made a noise of agreement with her brother. "And there's the fact that, for some reason, Hades kids get into all sorts of things. Apparently they're just as bad, or worse, than Percy, here."

"Hey!"

"Well, it's _true_," Thalia protested. "But seriously, I'm hoping that you two will help us three out. We don't really want to stay here, since it severely restricts on what we can do, and with the amount of trouble newcomers are bound to get in, we'll have no trouble staying up with the mythology media. I don't support the Camps, per se, but I'm fairly sure that none of us like this Ethan guy and what he's doing to Kronos."

Nico blinked. "What's he doing to Kronos? Shouldn't we be _thanking_ him if he's, I don't know, chopping him up into smaller pieces?"

"No," Thalia said flatly. "He's raising Kronos and fitting each piece together."

Bianca shuddered. "That's morbid."

"Tell me about it," Thalia agreed. "And, call me protective, but also so that you can at least have one parent that cares for you. Percy's mother treats all of this group like her own children. Even me, and I'm older than the second oldest by seven years. Most of the demigods, from what I can gather, don't have a good home life, or their parents don't even know that they are demigods. But Percy's mother has the patience of a saint and she'll take just about anyone who asked her, directly or indirectly."

"Thus is the praise of Sally Jackson," Percy said solemnly.

Thalia shocked him. "Oh, shut up, you!"

Percy doused her in tap water, irritated, his hair sticking straight up all over his head like an inky porcupine. Bianca hid her laugh behind her head, but Nico had no such qualms. Suddenly she was very glad that she'd hidden her laugh, as Nico got soaked as well.

"Hey!" Nico complained.

"Hay is for horses, and we don't have any," Percy snapped, running a hand through his spiky hair in an effort to get it to calm down.

Bianca's flame flickered and nearly went out because she was laughing so hard.

"I can tell who exactly will be the voice of reason in the coming months," Thalia said dryly. "And it isn't Percy."

"We actually do have horses, Percy," Bianca said, hardly keeping her laughter at bay. "They're at the stables, and they actually aren't horses, they're pegasi."

Percy grumbled. "Whatever. They aren't bunking in here, now are they?"

The image of pegasi trotting around the space they were in and sleeping here was too funny for anyone to exist.

* * *

Percy snuck out of his cabin for the second time, after everyone was asleep. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't. Sleep, that is.

He paced along the beach, hoping to walk out his energy, reveling in the strength of the sea beside him. Then Percy nearly smacked himself: here he was, standing next to the source of his power, hoping to get tired. That's not going to happen anytime soon.

Before he could turn to go, he heard splashes behind him that didn't coincide with the rest of the pounding sea.

He turned around again, searching the sea for the source of the splashes.

_Help us, lord!_

Percy started. _What the…_

Then the horses came into view. Well, horses with fish tails. And people think that humans with fish tails look weird!

_Help us, lord!_

"I'm not a lord," Percy told them, irritated. "Why do you need help?"

_There's a creature stuck at the bottom, lord!_

"Don't call me lord, gods damnit!" Percy yelled in frustration. "Where is it?"

_Yes, lord, whatever you say, lord. Follow us!_

Percy waded into the sea after them, swimming through the frigid water. The fish-horses—_hippocampi_, the word appeared, unbidden in his head—swirled around a sunken fishing boat, stirring up the muck.

"Whoa!" Percy yelled, nearly getting trampled. "I don't need a stampede here!"

_We don't know what it is, lord. Many strange things are stirring._

"I got that," Percy muttered, trying to find the creature they were all worked up about.

He waited a little for the muck to settle. Percy blinked when he saw the sea creature.

It was a cow.

"Moooo," it mooed mournfully.

The poor thing was all tangled up in kelp and part of it was trapped under the fishing boat.

"How on earth did you get under there?" Percy muttered, swimming closer. The underwater cow shied away from him. "Hey hey hey," he soothed. "I'm trying to help. It's okay. I'm going to try and get you out of there."

_Free it, lord!_

"Yes, I got that, too," Percy muttered impatiently, eyeing the cow, the kelp, and the sunken wreck.

"Moooooo," the cow mooed again.

"I don't understand you," Percy informed it. "I have this weird disorder where I only understand horses. Sorry."

His mother would've facepalmed at that sentence. Percy pushed the thought aside.

Percy drew his sword, intending to cut the cow free of the kelp and get a closer look on what part of him was trapped under the boat, but the cow absolutely freaked when it saw the blade.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, _whoa_," Percy said, trying to calm it down. "I'm just trying to cut you free, I'm not going to do anything harmful to you, but you need to keep still!"

Instead of reassuring the cow, it thrashed more. Percy put the blade up. "It's okay. See? No sword. Sword's gone. Peaceful thoughts. Mama cows. Vegetarianism. Manatees."

He held out his hand for the cow to inspect. It sniffed his hand and then butted against it like a cat.

"You're weird, you know that?" Percy muttered, eyeing the mess that he would have to untangle the cow from. "You gonna let me near you now?"

"Moo," it grunted.

Percy took that as a yes, and set to work.

Needless to say, it took forever. An hour passed before the cow was free from the kelp and Percy discovered that the back half of the cow was like some kind of serpent's tail. If you took a cow, a baby sea serpent, and modeled it like a hippocampus, you'd get something like what he was looking at.

He told the hippocampi to push the boat over so that the cow-serpent would be free. When the carcass of the boat lifted off of the cow's tail, it darted forward on it's own, butted it's head against Percy's side, and swam off.

Percy half-laughed and half-sighed as he swam back to the surface.

* * *

Thalia shook her brother and cousins awake at the crack of dawn. "If I know the Hunters, they'll have left before us, despite the prophecy, just to escape from _males_." She rolled her eyes.

Percy quickly slung his bag that he'd carried for so many months over one shoulder, pocketing Riptide. He turned around, and saw that Thalia and Jason were doing the same thing. Bianca and Nico were still packing their bags.

Bianca was packing the bare necessities, whereas Nico was shoveling everything he could fit into his bag. The trio burst into laughter. The two siblings turned around.

"What?" Bianca asked defensively.

Jason moved to help Bianca out, mirth dancing in his eyes, and Percy walked around to Nico, emptying his pack onto the bed, letting out a low whistle, surprised at how much he'd been able to stuff in there.

"Okay, look, Nico. You need more than the bare necessities, but you definitely don't need all of," he gestured towards the mess on the bed helplessly, "_this_."

Extra clothing, canteens of both water and nectar, plastic baggies of food and ambrosia, Nico's Myth-o-magic cards and statues, a bar of soap, some money from the camp store, and a couple of tools and extra weapons were all debated on. Bianca got more into her pack, while Nico had significantly less. Percy let Nico take his cards because he doubted that they'd be coming back to the cabin for awhile.

They ventured out of the Poseidon cabin warily.

Chiron came galloping up to them. "The Hunters that are going are waiting impatiently in the car."

"That's surprising," Thalia muttered. "I'd have thought that they would've taken off without us."

Annabeth, of course, was already there, along with Luke and Grover. Coupled with the fact that most of the Big Three group was boys, the Hunters were probably going to be absolutely fuming by the end of the trip.

They all piled into the car. Among the Hunters, there was only Zoë and Phoebe who deigned to travel with males, and Annabeth, Luke, and Grover were the only ones who were campers, and that left the five of the Big Three: the strangers. Or so they guessed, at least.

Meanwhile, the Big Three kids were just hoping that the 'strangers' didn't mean the _Romans_.

The road trip was long, as they traveled to Richmond, Virginia, to board a train. Zoë sat in the driver's seat, with Phoebe next to her, Luke and Thalia behind them, with Jason and Bianca behind them, Grover and Nico behind those two, and Percy and Annabeth sitting in the far back, as far away from each other as possible.

What made it interesting was the fact that they all had nervous habits. Annabeth slapped her cap against her thigh. Percy ran a hand through his hair, his fingers drumming against the seat. Nico fiddled with one of his figurines. Grover let out the occasional bleat. Bianca played with her fire. Jason's fingers were crackling with electricity. Phoebe ran her hands together, her calluses on her hands creating a rough scraping noise. Zoë occasionally let out a noisy huff of air.

"We need to stop just outside of Richmond," Thalia said, leaning forward to speak to Zoë, though it was unnecessary, as the car was silent except for the movements.

"Wherefore, daughter of Zeus?" Zoë asked tensely.

"I have supplies stocked in a safe house on the James River," Thalia said easily. "Jason and I stayed there for an extremely long time, compared to our other safe houses; we have things there that may be vital to the quest."

"How long until we reach there?" Zoë asked warily.

Thalia studied the surroundings going past. "Five minutes at most," she said, recognizing that huge, twisted oak. "Probably two."

"Why did thee not inform me of this sooner?" Zoë asked testily.

"It didn't occur to me until just now," Thalia said angrily.

Zoë pulled over and the car lurched to a stop. Thalia climbed out and slammed the door shut, walking off into the woods confidently. Percy and Jason followed suit.

"Wait," Luke said. "Why are all of you going? You're all Big Three kids, you should take someone with less scent."

"We've survived this long that way, I don't think we'll run into too much trouble," Percy said, smiling a little hesitantly.

Twenty minutes later, the three returned, with a jar of black gunk, a new bow and quiver for Thalia, and a new sword for Percy, as well as more ambrosia and nectar.

She tossed the jar of gunk to Luke, the ambrosia and nectar to Bianca, and climbed into the van. Luke held up the jar curiously. "What the heck is in this?"

"Greek fire that hasn't been lighted," Thalia said shortly. "Had to make some in an emergency, came up with two jars. I used one, kept the other. Right now, it's about as dangerous as mud."

"You _made_ Greek fire?" Annabeth asked incredulously.

"What, you guys use it all the time in your mock-naval battles," Thalia said defensively.

"Greek fire can only be made in a forge with some seriously weird materials," Annabeth explained. "At least, as far as I knew."

"It has to get really hot to light," Thalia explained. "Once you get all of the ingredients, you're fine. Or, at least, Jason and I are. I can make more if I had the ingredients and if the car doesn't mind getting fried."

Annabeth looked mildly alarmed. "Let's not say we did."

Thalia shrugged, buckling her seat belt.

The ride continued.

Luke and Annabeth suddenly straightened. "Pull over," Luke said.

Zoë rolled her eyes. "Do you have a safe house as well?"

Luke and Annabeth were already out of the car and running down the road. Startled, the Big Three kids exchanged glances and followed, unsure if it was a monster or what, climbing out of the car and sprinting after them. Zoë groaned in frustration and followed, Phoebe following her. Grover sighed and followed the mass exodus.

They found Luke and Annabeth gathered around a small area in an abandoned ironworks shop. Annabeth reverently picked up a rusted hammer, smiling sadly, clutching it to her chest like a six-year-old with a teddy bear.

Luke was hugging her comfortingly. "We'll get her back."

Annabeth laughed weakly. "She scared the absolute crap out of me, right here. So did you, actually."

"Because I grabbed the hand that you tried to brain me with?" Luke said dryly.

Annabeth's shoulder's shook. "Yeah. And I didn't know what to make of Ethan. He looked creepy in the dim light. 'Almost evil' was my exact thought. Now I wish that I could go back and tell my younger self that he will be."

Luke shrugged helplessly, rubbing her back.

"Must we stop for every memory?" Zoë demanded impatiently, catching up to the Big Three kids. "We must rescue Artemis before it is too late for her."

Annabeth whirled on her, grey eyes flashing. "Has it ever occurred to you that we have just as much right to want to hurry as you do? In case you haven't noticed, Artemis is immortal, unable to die. Clarisse, however, is a lot more easily killed and beaten than your mistress."

"Then why do thee dally?!" Zoë cried impatiently.

"The prophecy says that five of us—five of this very group—are to 'venture into no man's land'. Personally, I believe that they'll die in this _no man's land_. This prophecy isn't cheery, not in the least, and Luke's had some severe prophecies before. 'She who holds power, her power be waned'? It sounds like one of the females here—including you, Zoë, including me and Bianca and Thalia and Phoebe—something is going to happen to one of us, to strip us of our powers or even negate them completely. 'The Titan's Curse'? There's a lot of curses on the Titans, and now one of us has to 'withstand' it? None of us are strong enough to bear a curse enforced on a Titan. Think about it, Zoë! With the amount of deaths that could be, there'd only be three or four left to return. As much as I want to rescue Clarisse, I also don't want to see the strangers die, to see Luke or Grover or you or Phoebe die."

Zoë studied Annabeth with a stony face. "There is one curse," she said finally. "One curse that a mortal can bear. Only the strongest and bravest are able to bear it, those with the most spirit."

They all waited.

"The sky," Zoë said quietly. "We are going to MountTam, MountOthyrus, where Atlas holds the sky. No doubt he forced Clarisse to take the burden. When they captured Artemis, she would've been compelled to help a hurting maiden."

Luke and Annabeth seemed pale.

"You can't force that burden on someone," Thalia said quietly. "This guy that started this whole shebang—Evan? Earl?"

"Ethan," Annabeth said quietly.

"Yes, him," Thalia agreed. "Ethan would've taken the burden willingly from Atlas. From what I know about Clarisse, she might've wormed her way from her captors and stole over the mountain top, looking for a way out, and encountered Ethan, whom she'd known and trusted for a long time. The burden saps your strength at an incredible pace, so Ethan would've been in pain. Clarisse might've given into the side that screamed at her 'he's a good guy!' And then Artemis comes and takes the burden from Clarisse."

The Hunters and Campers seemed grey.

"I'll go get the car, I doubt you guys will be able to walk there," Thalia said quietly, and jogged off.

She came back in thirty seconds later, spear out in the open and ready to use. Everyone drew their weapons. "We've got a problem," Thalia said grimly, uneasily twirling her spear. "The house across the street is abandoned. So why did the door just open without human assistance?"

* * *

"Three people," Phoebe offered. "Since that's how many members are usually on a quest. It should be safer. The rest of us wait out here."

"There's ten of us," Luke pointed out dryly. "And half of us are literally born leaders, and two more are natural leaders in and of themselves. So who are we going to choose, and are they going to end up killing each other rather than the monster or what-have-you?"

"Thalia or Jason," Annabeth suggested. "If things get bad, they can blast the house and we'll know to come in."

"Luke," Thalia said slowly, studying the demigod of Hermes. "You can get us into and out of the mansion if all the doors suddenly lock by themselves, correct?"

Luke shrugged. "I honestly don't know. It depends on what locked them, if they're stronger than I am."

"You have a better shot than anyone else, but are unsure," Thalia surmised. "And if I'm going to blast the house anyway, I'm going to be charging my Greek fire, and if we're taking potent fires, I'm taking Bianca. Hellfire and Greek fire are extremely similar, I learned that went we PO'd Hades."

Bianca chewed on the inside of her cheek nervously, but agreed to go. "What about Annabeth?"

Luke, Annabeth, and Thalia looked at the daughter of Hades in surprise. Bianca flushed a little at the attention. "Well, she's a daughter of Athena, the wisest goddess, and considering how badly south this could go, a little bit of wisdom can't hurt…"

Thalia shrugged. "Okay. C'mon, Annabeth."

Thalia, Luke, Annabeth and Bianca crept towards the house, which now looked normal. Shut door, locked windows, drawn blinds, the whole shebang.

"Is it locked?" Bianca asked.

Thalia tested the doorknob and nodded, frowning. "The door was hanging open like two minutes ago. Why is it locked now?"

"Maybe to warn us of danger?" Luke asked wryly.

Thalia sighed. "Probably. Do your thing, Luke."

He gritted his teeth. "I hate doing my thing." But he put his hand against the knob and mentally pushed the little knobs inside the lock into the open position anyway.

"That is so cool," Thalia said.

Annabeth had the same look on her face, with a wistful smile. "I used to find locks when we were on the run and I'd make him open them."

"You drove me nuts, doing that," Luke told her dryly.

"Not any worse than Percy taking a picture every time I lighted something on fire with my lightning," Thalia said exasperatedly.

Bianca opened the door cautiously and ventured in. The three others shut up and followed her.

They stood back-to-back in the lobby, waiting for something to happen. The four stood there for a full half a minute in the silence, illuminated by the light coming in the open door.

Then the door slammed shut of its own accord.

Luke darted to it and tried to open it, found it locked, and then he stopped and tried unlocking it until beads of sweat popped up on his forehead, but nothing happened.

"Window," Thalia said urgently, making for one of the drape-covered windows.

She got within five feet of the dark curtain and suddenly it came alive, lunging for Thalia and her at-ready spear. It wrapped around Thalia in a poisonous embrace, and she screamed in pain, stabbing at it. Luke grabbed her and forcibly removed Thalia from the deadly curtain. He fell backwards, and Thalia landed heavily on top of them, both of them gasping in pain.

Annabeth went white when she saw Luke's arm, sprawled on the dusty floor. It was covered in bright red blisters, oozing with black stuff that was most likely poisonous.

Thalia was curled up in a fetal position, half-sobs coming out.

Bianca fumbled for her canteen of nectar, scrambling over to the two. "Thalia, I know it hurts, but I need to see it so I can heal it."

Without waiting for Thalia to respond, Bianca coated her finger in nectar and dabbed at the sores wherever they were visible and not covered by the rest of Thalia's body.

"You're lucky you wear leather," Bianca said shakily, liking to throw up. "I'd get a new jacket, though, after all this is over."

"I'll just take one from another monster, like I did this one," Thalia said through gritted teeth.

"Guys?" Annabeth called.

They all looked up. Annabeth held up a piece of armor that looked like it could withstand a spear thrust from Thalia, and yet it had a horseshoe-shaped dent in it.

"It probably just got trod on by a horse," Bianca reasoned, going back to administering to Thalia's blisters. Luke looked uneasy, but continued trickling nectar over his arms.

"Guys, this looks more like gums rather than a horseshoe," Annabeth said warily, studying the piece of armor.

Thalia finally uncurled from her fetal position, wincing. Whatever the curtain did to Thalia, it was definitely poisonous, and Bianca renewed her efforts on getting Thalia healed as quickly as possible.

_Clack, clack, clack!_

The four froze.

_Clack, clack, clack!_

Red eyes appeared in the shadows, in the corner, beyond the deadly curtains. Bianca, Thalia, and Luke scrambled away. The monster stepped on Thalia's half-disintegrated spear and broke it in half with a loud _CRACK. _It seemed unbothered by the deadly curtains that wrapped their deadly embrace around it.

"Well, there goes that weapon," Thalia muttered.

"Up the stairs!" Annabeth said urgently, already sprinting towards them. The other three followed, Thalia leaning on Bianca a little bit. Annabeth dithered at the top of the stairs, debating which hallway to go down, when more monsters showed up and she made her decision: "Left!" she yelled.

Bianca and Thalia were lagging behind. Luke stepped back and picked up Thalia like she was a feather and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Put me _down_, you _stupid_ son of Hermes!" Thalia screamed at him.

"It's not my fault that you're poisoned!" he yelled back at her, running after Annabeth.

"How was I supposed to know that the curtains were alive and kicking poisonously?!" Thalia yelled defensively.

"Will both of you lovebirds _shut up_?!" Annabeth yelled at both of them.

"We _aren't_ lovebirds!" they screamed at her in unison.

"Are you _really_ discussing this now?" Bianca said, exasperated. She opened a door and yanked them all in, and hurriedly shut the door.

"Hello."

They all screamed and turned around. Annabeth scooped up a discarded weapon on the floor and nailed the whatever-it-was in the eye. It blinked at her angrily. "Wait! Wait! That won't do you any good," the monster said.

"Luke, you can put me down, now," Thalia said into Luke's back, sounding supremely irritated. "Or I'm going to kick the crap out of your nuts."

Luke hurriedly set Thalia down, and she stumbled a little.

"Tend to her," the monster said reassuringly. "Those curtains are nasty." It growled.

"What _are_ you?" Bianca asked warily.

"The monster is called a leucrota, if that's what you mean. It speaks for me. I am human. A demigod, like you." The leucrota snarled.

_Clack, clack, clack!_ it went. Luke saw that its mouth was lining with something metal-looking, and when it snapped its jaws shut, it created that _clack_ sound.

"My name is Hal," the leucrota said. Thalia turned her attention to an old man sitting on his bed.

Bianca made her sit down, eyeing the monster warily. "Does it respond to you?" she asked.

"Yes," the leucrota said.

"Send it away. I don't feel comfortable with it staring me down, bars or no bars," Bianca said firmly. "Plus, we're making a plan for getting out of here, and I don't know if it understands us."

"We won't have a way for communicating," Hal protested.

"Writing things down. Morse code. We can all lip-read," Luke suggested.

The leucrota snarled and backed out of the room.

They all visibly relaxed. Bianca tended to Thalia a little quicker now that she wasn't moving so stiffly. "What are we going to do about your spear?" she asked Thalia.

She shrugged. "Between my brother, you and your brother, and Percy, we should attract enough monsters to replace my spear and then some."

"It was a magic weapon!" Annabeth protested. "That's the highest honor you can get!"

Thalia's eyes narrowed at Annabeth. "You know, I can see why Percy rubs you the wrong way, and vice versa. You love the gods. Percy doesn't. You respect the gods. Percy doesn't. You have contact with the gods. Percy doesn't. None of us do. I _won_ that weapon when Jason was two, and when I wrestled it from the _dracaena_ that held it, _it was not a magic item_. My father turned it into such because I caught the attention of the rest of the gods, with the help of my brother and Percy. That weapon had worn spots where I put my hands. That weapon held many memories for me. That weapon was _my_ spear. And this weapon that's downstairs and broken?" Thalia shook her head. "That's just _a_ spear. It bears no worn spots, no memories, and it is not mine. If I had won it, and it was a magic item, I would've claimed it as mine. But it is not, and it was not."

Hal wrote something down in the silence that followed: _An eloquent speaker_.

"I hold no love for the gods," she said flatly. "I've survived for ten years on my own, caring for two unskilled and naïve boys. And when I'm around you guys, my father makes an executive decision without my consent. I'd prefer being ignored."

Thunder rumbled. "Oh, shut up, you stupid, deadbeat, over-controlling, lily-livered coward!" Thalia screamed at the ceiling.

The other three stared at her in shock. Hal was silently laughing.

"Um, I think that poison has gone to her head," Luke said warily. "Personally, I don't feel like being collateral damage."

"Ha ha," Thalia snapped sarcastically.

Bianca just shook her head. She sat back. "I believe I got all of the sores, but you should rest."

Hal scribbled something down: _You have until sunset when those bars raise, and I can do nothing to stop the leucrota._

Thalia checked her watch. "It's two o'clock. When's sunset?"

Hal wrote, _6:13 pm._

"Can you light that Greek fire?" Bianca asked.

"An hour of sleep is all I need," Thalia promised. "I've been through much worse. Plus, we need to get going. We've got friends waiting for us."

"Okay then," Luke agreed. "Sleep. We'll wake you up in an hour."

* * *

Thalia woke to someone shaking her shoulder. "Lemme 'lone, Jace," Thalia mumbled.

"Yup, she's fine," someone said.

Then Thalia remembered, and she bolted upright, slamming her head against someone else's. "Ow!" she yelled.

"What the crap!" the other person hollered.

"What on earth were you doing so close to me?!" Thalia screeched, clutching her head.

"Damn, you've got a hard head!"

There were some laughs.

Thalia's vision cleared, and she saw that it was Luke that she'd just rammed into. He was wincing as he touched the side of his head. Thalia felt a bit better that he was in just as much pain as she was.

"Well, I was going to tell you that I cracked a magic safe and apparently got a weapon that nobody knows how to work, but since it feels like your head just cracked my skull open, maybe not!" Luke said loudly.

Stifling laughter, Bianca showed her a charm bracelet. Thalia's eyes widened, now fully awake. "Yeah, I know what that is. I'll wait until we're facing an enemy, though."

Bianca gave her the bracelet. "I think it's yours, then, because none of us have a clue."

"It's probably just a knockoff," she admitted as she clipped it on. "But the story is something all Zeus kids know. Where's the Greek fire bottle?"

Annabeth handed it to her. "Are you sure that's Greek fire?"

Thalia shrugged. "Well, the other bottle worked, and this is from the same batch, so…yeah, I'm pretty sure. I just need to light it. Then it'll look like the Greek fire you're accustomed to seeing."

She started crawling under the computer desk, taking off the cover for the socket.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" Luke asked, rubbing his head still.

"I can't access the window, so I'm going to have to have the lightning strike the rod outside, and direct the electricity through to here," Thalia explained. "Otherwise, the Greek fire won't light."

Annabeth arched an eyebrow. "I thought Greek fire was dangerously unstable."

Thalia smiled. "In this form? It's as stable as a Noble Gas. Add a lot of electricity? That's when you need to run. Oh, you might want to go to the far side of the room."

Thalia knelt under the computer table, holding the Greek fire sludge and concentrating on the weather outside. Thunder rumbled. Then lightning flashed, lightning up the world, and thunder deafened the occupants of the room. Thalia crawled out from under the table, smirking proudly, holding up the jar of swirling, green, potent fire.

Bianca's eyes widened. Thalia noticed her expression. "Can you control it?"

She held out her hands. Thalia gave the bottle to her, watching curiously. Nothing seemed to happen as Bianca sat on the floor, staring at the bottle. Then the fire churned more violently, and all of a sudden it shrank into a little tiny ball, about the size of a marble. She held up the bottle for the rest of them to see, smiling tiredly.

"Okay, then," Thalia exclaimed. "Let's torch this place!"

They all raided the bathroom and bedroom for things to take with them. When the three girls came back from the bathroom, they found Luke arguing with Hal.

"No!" he said vehemently. "Bianca can control it!"

Hal scribbled something down and shoved it into Luke's face. His expression turned from pale to red. "Apollo wouldn't do that!"

Hal looked at him.

"You've served your time!" Luke told him vehemently. "You can go to camp, you can teach there, regardless of you being mute!"

Hal looked at him some more.

"I am not letting you sacrifice yourself because you think that Bianca—a daughter of Hades—is not _capable enough_ to control the Greek fire!" Luke yelled at him.

Hal scribbled something else.

"I can carry her if it comes to that!" Luke protested.

Hal wrote something down.

"No," Luke said flatly. Hal undid the knife from his belt and handed it to Luke, who didn't take it. "I'm not going to take it, you stubborn old man, because you're going to need it!"

Hal gave Luke a look that said, _I've been called much worse._

Luke pushed Hal's knife away. "_No._ N-O. I'm starting to wonder if you're deaf!"

Hal wrote something down and showed it to Luke.

Luke's red face turned ashen. "Hal, _no_."

"Luke?" Annabeth asked cautiously, looking from the old man to the son of Hermes. "What's going on?"

Luke spluttered. "This _idiot_ is convinced that he's going to die in the explosion, freeing him of his curse of having to rely on the leucrota. He wants to throw the Greek fire bottle when it comes to that time, and he wants to give his knife to us, which apparently has some sort of ward against evil on it."

"_What?_" they yelled.

"We can find another way," Thalia assured him.

"He said that this is the only way," Luke said flatly.

"He doesn't know what this can do," Thalia said vehemently, shaking her charm bracelet.

"I know. I told him that. He said that this is the only way," Luke said.

There was silence in the room.

"Are you sure?" Annabeth asked Hal quietly. He nodded.

She handed him the vial.

"Annabeth!" Thalia yelled, shocked.

Bianca gave a wordless yell of protest.

Hal gave her the knife, with a note. Annabeth read it, and smiled sadly at him. "I'll treasure it."

To the rest of them, she said, "Hide in the bathroom. There's an extra door that leads into the hallway. Hal's going to raise the bars, attract all the leucrota, and we're going to dart out of the house."

"What about the door?" Thalia questioned.

"We'll break it down if it comes to that," Annabeth said. "Luke and I are masters of breaking doors down."

Thalia nodded, and the four of them went into the bathroom. They could hear the leucrotae snarling. "C'mon, you stupid mutts! They're annoying me!"

It was strange to hear a leucrota insult itself, Thalia mused. Then she heard the squealing of metal against metal, and they darted out of the bathroom, towards the front door. The hallways and rooms were empty.

"They're in the bathroom!" they could hear Hal shout. Then, they could hear a wordless battle cry. "_Eat this you filthy monsters!_"

The explosion rocked the world. The blast knocked the door off its hinges and shot them out of the mansion. Thalia landed, rolling with the impact, and kept running towards the car, tears streaming down her face, dragging the rest of them with her. They piled into the car.

"Drive," she ordered Zoë, her voice cracking.

Zoë stepped on the gas pedal, and they rocketed away from the blazing mansion.

Thalia hugged Bianca as the younger girl began to sob. Two seats back, Luke and Annabeth had tears dripping down their faces.

The rest of the car just sat in stunned silence as Thalia Grace broke down, hugging one of the newest members of the Big Three group, both to comfort and for comfort.

* * *

**Ruby: Well, that wraps up this 8,620 word chapter. And guys, before you say that I made Thalia OOC-think about it. She's used to dealing with things on her own, and it irks her to have to rely on someone else to protect her (thus, Luke picking her up and she screaming at him). And then to have the person she's relying on ****_dying_****? She's never had someone die for her before. It's humbling. It's painful. It's the first start to have the Big Three kids becoming closer with Camp Half-Blood.**

**Next chapter: They finally reach the train after many delays, Annabeth finally tells Percy about Clarisse, Luke, and Ethan and their roles in her life, Atlas is sighted, the red-head nightmare comes into play, and Bianca and Jason end up having a pillow fight and a screaming contest.**


	5. Rachel Elizabeth Dare

They boarded the train that evening. Annabeth took up the dangerous habit of lounging between cars, balancing on the hook and leaning up against a car, watching the scenery pass her by and under her, feeling the slight breeze against her face. Thanks to the machinery, it was probably the quietest place on the train.

Five hours after she started this, Thalia opened the car door and freaked out that Annabeth was just standing there without a care in the world.

Needless to say, Annabeth moved to a different spot.

Another five hours after Thalia's freak-out, Percy found her. Annabeth watched with mild interest as he shut the door behind him and mimicked her posture: two feet on the hook with his back up against the car to steady himself.

After five minutes of them both simply watching the gravel pass by under them, Percy finally spoke: "I can actually see why you like it out here. It's peaceful." He suddenly flashed Annabeth a wry grin. "Being someone who has rarely gotten a break since he was six, I can appreciate peace."

"Your cousin doesn't agree," Annabeth told him dryly.

Percy laughed. "Yeah, she has that mother bear instinct for most of us."

They lapsed into silence again.

"Who was Clarisse?" Percy suddenly asked. "I mean, what was she like?"

Annabeth looked at him, startled. "Why?"

Percy's lips twitched. "Normally, I stick out my neck for people I actually know. I haven't got a clue what she's like or what her connection to the camp is."

Annabeth lapsed into silence, thinking. "You know about all those movies with that one singular hero?"

He raised an eyebrow, but he nodded.

"Clarisse is that hero," she said. "She isn't _a_ hero in Camp Half-Blood. Clarisse is _the_ hero. At one point or another, she's saved every single demigod in that Camp."

"Including you?" Percy questioned.

"Especially me," Annabeth confirmed.

The daughter of Athena sighed and turned her eyes to the lightening sky. "To understand Clarisse, you must understand where she comes from. Clarisse is a daughter of Ares. Her mother knew who she had attracted, and unlike Thalia's mother, Clarisse's mother took care of Clarisse until the point where Clarisse was literally locked in the house. Clarisse, needless to say, couldn't stand that and ran away from home. She, like you, wandered around for years. According to her, when she was twelve, she ran into Luke, who also ran away from home and was fourteen at the time, and they paired up. It stayed that way for another six months until they found Ethan, whose father had died within two weeks before they found him. He was the same age as Luke and Clarisse—fourteen or so."

Annabeth exhaled. "Six months later, I ran away from home. I knew the police would be after me, so I hid in that abandoned factory back there. I was armed with a hammer and I had fleece pajamas on." She smiled wryly. "When I heard Luke and Clarisse talking, I thought they were the police and I nearly brained Luke with that hammer. Not quite, but I was so close. Clarisse, even though she was hardly twelve at the time, was big and hulking. Frankly put, between Luke grabbing my wrist with the hammer faster than I had thought possible, and her size, I got the crap scared out of my seven-year-old self. Ethan simply held the torch, and in the light he looked almost evil."

"You said in the warehouse that you wish that you could go back and tell your younger self that he _would_ be evil," Percy remembered.

She shrugged helplessly. "I looked up to him. I looked up to all of them. It just hurt that much more when Ethan tried to kill Luke, five years later."

Percy wasn't good at math, but he tried. "You were twelve?"

She nodded absently. "The nymphs dragged Luke out from the woods. He was green and turning gray when we got to him. If it wasn't for Chiron's healing and Luke's resistance to most poisons, he'd be dead right now. But you want to know about Clarisse."

"See, Clarisse is powerful—more powerful than your average child of Ares. We've never figured out why; for a long time we never even thought about why, we just went with it. She wasn't as powerful as, say, a Big Three kid, but she can rival Thalia when it comes to weapons. She's called on her father's power more than any other demigod known in history. But because of that, monsters were attracted to us. Like you, I thought the high number was normal—until I got to Camp and people told us otherwise."

"A satyr was sent to grab Clarisse and make sure she got to Camp alive—don't do anything that would distract from the mission. But he couldn't just take Clarisse and leave with her, and there was the fact that Clarisse wouldn't leave without us, so he tried to take us all to Camp. Somehow I got separated from the group, and they had to backtrack so they could find me, and then we resumed running towards Camp."

She exhaled. "We made it all the way to the edge of the valley when the monsters caught up to us. Clarisse made the satyr take the rest of us farther into the valley while she held them off. She was fatally wounded."

Percy's breath hitched. "I was Athena's youngest child—second youngest, now," Annabeth continued distantly. She wasn't really on the train at the moment; she was seven again, kicking Luke and Ethan, straining to get back to Clarisse. "My mother saw what Clarisse had done for me, and instead of Clarisse dying, Athena turned her into an olive tree. But we didn't know that, and we all thought her dead, and the tree was the way of Athena thanking Ares publicly. We all thought that was it."

"Then, two weeks later—I remember this distinctly—there was a half-blood that faced off with the Minotaur with nothing but his bare hands. When the demigod went past Clarisse's tree, the monster followed and suddenly looked like he'd smashed into an invisible stone wall. One of the monster's horns broke off, and the demigod used the horn to kill the Minotaur. That's when we realized that Athena's gift was much more than a public thanks—it had turned CampHalf-Blood into a true safe haven."

"Who was it?" Percy asked curiously.

Annabeth looked startled. "My older half-brother, Malcolm. He doesn't look like much, but he uses that to his advantage." She laughed a little. "Sometimes he catches even me off guard."

"The years passed peacefully, until I turned twelve. Then Zeus's lightning bolt was stolen and Luke was the prime suspect, and everything was in havoc: demigods were panicking, monsters were amassing, we had more than one death, and it was constantly raining—in case you hadn't noticed, the Camp has weather control, it doesn't rain or snow unless it's permitted. I went on the quest with Luke and Grover, yada yada yada, we brought back the lightning bolt, Zeus was happy, it stopped raining, and things returned to normal, until Luke was poisoned and Ethan revealed that he was working for Kronos. Then things plunged back into havoc again."

Annabeth grew quiet until Percy thought she'd talked herself hoarse. Then she started talking again. "Then, last summer, Clarisse's tree was poisoned. Grover disappeared like all the satyrs before him, on their quest to find the lost god Pan."

"Uh, sorry, did you say Pam? Like the cooking spray?" Percy asked, confused.

"Pan," Annabeth explained. "P-A-N. He's the god of the Wild, the satyr's true master. Anyway."

"Luke, me, and a very sweet Cyclops named Tyson—"

Percy choked. "You went on a quest with a _Cyclops_?"

"He's your half-brother," Annabeth said, grinning at Percy's shocked face. "And besides, he's has the mentality of an eight-year-old, despite his six-foot-seven build."

Annabeth, for half a second, thought that Percy was going to have a heart attack. Then he shuddered and Annabeth resumed her story with a bit of amusement. "But yes, Luke, Tyson, and I went on a quest to get Grover and also to get the one thing that could cure Clarisse's tree: the Golden Fleece." She suddenly grimaced. "Long story short, we went into the Sea of Monsters, I was less than friendly towards Tyson for the majority of the trip, Luke somehow got himself turned into a guinea pig, we stole a ride on Ethan's cruise liner for a little bit there, we saved Grover, got the Fleece, and then Ethan tried to steal it from us after we did all the hard work."

"He was going to use it to heal Kronos," Percy guessed.

Annabeth nodded, surprised that Percy picked that up so quickly. "Yeah. Unfortunately for Ethan, we had sent the Golden Fleece on ahead of us." She said that sentence with a smirk that would've been visible from a mile away. "Anyway, the Golden Fleece was hung on Clarisse's tree, and it was okay. The poison was purged."

Her eyes were distant. "That night, I stood watch on the hill to make sure no one was to steal the Golden Fleece. There always had been a guard up there, until we got Peleus, who now guards the Fleece. It was totally unexpected. I was just standing there, minding my own business, when her body appeared in front of me. I just stood there in shock. Grover found me first, and then ran and got everybody, pounding on doors and yelling at people to wake up, to go to Half-Blood Hill. Chiron came out. Our newest son of Demeter—he actually looks quite like you, only with dark brown hair and a little shorter—he pushed past everyone crowded around me and Clarisse, and propped her up on his shoulder. Everyone just stood there in shock as he yelled at us for being slow-poking idiots, and for them to help her to the Big House, to get her to the infirmary."

"Then Clarisse stirred, making it very certain that she was alive, coughed, and asked, 'Who the hell are you?' to Liam." Her shoulders shook with laughter. "Six years of being a tree, and the first thing she asks is 'who the hell are you?'. That's so Clarisse." Annabeth paused. "But it was weird, Clarisse still thought she had just turned thirteen. Technically, she should be around Thalia's age, but she only looks sixteen or so." Annabeth grimaced. "She didn't react well to me being a teenager, or Luke being in his early twenties, or that we were now waging war on Ethan. She thought I was seven, Luke fourteen, and Ethan the shy kid that hung out at the back of the group."

"Well, she was turned into a tree," Percy pointed out reasonably. "Last I checked, most trees don't really have physical brains so that they can think. She probably didn't even realize she'd been turned into a tree."

"She didn't," Annabeth agreed. "She thought she was going crazy. She sounded crazy for awhile, there, too. Kept saying that she was supposed to be dying, not having Annabeth being a _teenager_."

Her shoulders shook a little with laughter.

Percy had a wry smile on his lips.

"About a month into it, she gave up after I whaled her one—with her own moves—for calling me a 'hallucinatory knockoff of Annabeth'—and that's a direct quote," Annabeth said smugly.

Percy laughed aloud, the sound carrying beyond the small space and was lost in the wind of the train's wake. The silence that followed was comfortable.

"Thalia said something about you not respecting the gods, back at the mansion," Annabeth said hesitantly. "What's that all about?"

Percy's face darkened. "Back before Thalia and Jason had found me, I lived with my mother and stepfather."

He lapsed into silence, a brooding expression on his face. "You don't know my mother, so you can't appreciate how truly horrible it was, but my stepfather was a drunk. To be put shortly so I can get this over with, he stank. My mother married him, for _me_. He covered up my scent for years. He hit my mother, he beat me, and by the name of my cousin's father, if he'd made the wrong move, I would've killed him."

Percy's voice rasped with the sound of cold steel, much like a mortal sword blade. He stated the last sentence, so it sounded more like a fact rather than an oath or threat or promise. Annabeth shivered unconsciously, and it had nothing to do with the chilly night's air.

"When I went with Thalia and Jason, Mom divorced him, and we made my apartment a safe house. As far as I know, we have several deadly weapons at the apartment, a jar of unlit Greek fire, nectar, ambrosia, and a whole bunch of other demigod necessities."

Annabeth paused, thinking before she spoke. "So why the hatred for the gods?"

Percy met her gaze coolly. "My father has made no effort to come into my life, even after I found out who I actually was. He sat by as me and Mom were beat by an abusive drunk because of my lineage and the gods' never-ending supply of enemies." He looked up to the fading stars. "No. I have no respect for my father, nor my dramatic Uncle. The only three I have respect for is Hades, Hestia, and Athena."

Annabeth was startled. "Athena? Why Athena?"

Percy gave a bitter laugh. "Because you've met her, and she's been kind to you, which is more than I can say for my group. And it has the added bonus of irritating dear old Dad."

Annabeth gave him a wary look. "Between you and Thalia, I'm surprised this train hasn't been blown sky-high."

Percy simply laughed at her, throwing his head back and laughing to the sky. "Between Hera and Apollo, I highly doubt this train can be blown to smithereens."

The daughter of Athena gave him a lost look.

Percy pointed against the car she was standing against. "The side says _Sunwest Railways_. And we're looking for his twin sister, of whom he is extremely protective of. Coinci-dence, no? And the fact that Thalia and Jason hate their father for making their life miserable via telling their mother who Zeus really was—well, that probably gives something to Hera for her to gloat about—you know, sticking to the oath of marriage and all that jazz."

Annabeth was silent, digesting that. "What about Hades? Why do you respect him? Fear him, maybe, but respect?"

Percy gave her a wan smile. "_He_ came to _me_—a mere demigod—asking me to take care of his children. He may be a deadbeat, but at least he visibly cares enough to watch over them."

Annabeth went silent, pondering on that. "Hestia has no children, so why do you respect her? Have you met her?"

Percy grinned. "I love Aunty Hestia. There's only been two times when she's shown up at our fire, but she's a lot of fun. And she teaches us stuff, too."

"_Teaches_ you?" Annabeth asked, bewildered.

"I have a first-grade education, Wise Girl," Percy said dryly. "Thalia has a third-grade education, and Jason has no official education, period. Aunty Hestia brings us textbooks so that we can figure out what people are saying."

Annabeth stared at him, aghast. "You have a _first-grade_ education?!"

"I know, right?" he agreed. "You don't realize how important school is until you haven't got a clue what the person next to you is talking about."

"You know how to write," Annabeth checked warily. Percy nodded, an amused look on his face.

"And read," she asked. Percy nodded, now barely suppressing a laugh.

"You know your multiplication tables?"

Percy's face was turning red. "Up to ten, yes," he said shakily.

"You know phonetics?" Annabeth tested him.

Percy blinked. "What about a phoenix?"

Annabeth shook her head, smiling a little. "No, Seaweed Brain. _Pho-net-ics_. Not phoenix. It's how you sound out words. You can also use it to help you spell."

"Oh." Percy paused. "I still haven't got a clue what it is."

Annabeth groaned. "It's the scientific study of speech sounds and how they are produced."

Percy held up his hands, laughing. "Assuming we both make it back to Camp, please teach it to me there, not while we're balancing hazardously on a moving beam, okay?"

Annabeth's face hardened. "You think that we're all going to make it, don't you?"

Percy looked at her, unbothered by her tone. "Yeah. I do, actually. We might not all go back to Camp, but we'll make it out alive."

"Do you know how _unlikely_ that is?!" Annabeth yelled at him. "You're getting your hopes up for nothing!"

"In my experiences, levity and skill have one-upped death multiple times," Percy said calmly.

Annabeth stopped dead, both surprised at his statement and surprised that he—he had a first-grade education, damnit!—knew a word like _levity_. "Since when does _humor_ come into the equation?!"

Percy smiled mischievously. "Because the enemy has the same reaction as you do: complete shock that I'm joking around when I'm about to die. Or, they take it as mocking, and then they get angry, and their anger messes them up. Arrogance doesn't work all that great with monsters, either. It's the smart ones that you have to watch out for."

Annabeth stared at him in disbelief. "I have _never_ met an intelligent monster. That is just an oxymoron."

"I thought so too, until Thalia, Jason, and I got chased halfway across the country by said smart monster," Percy told her dryly.

Annabeth stared at him in disbelief. He nearly fell off the train, he was laughing so hard.

* * *

Percy woke to hitting a swaying floor. Then he heard Thalia shriek. "Gods, Thalia," he groaned.

"I thought Annabeth stopped perching precariously on that lock, now I find that she influenced you to do it too!" Thalia yelled at the pair of them. Percy, from his view from the floor, exchanged an amused glance with Annabeth.

"Technically, we're on the safest spot on the train," Annabeth pointed out. "There is literally no way someone can sneak up on us, and therefore, we don't get killed."

"Thalia, chill out. I've been in more unsteady positions before," Percy said dryly from the floor. "Calm down, mother bear."

Thalia calmed down a little, but she still looked fuming.

"Oh, come _on_, Thalia, that isn't nearly as bad as the pegasus," Percy said, annoyed. "Or even that encounter with those gorgons."

Thalia glared at him. "Well I'm _sorry_ if I thought that it was supposed to be me and Jason in the air with you safely _out_ of Zeus's domain!"

"Jason was out of it, you'd just gotten slammed into a wall, and our temporary ally was battling that thing alone. I saw an opening, I took it. End of story," Percy said crisply.

Thalia threw up her hands. "You literally jumped onto a pegasus's rear, and when it bucked, you jumped, so you went flying! Zeus could've killed you a dozen times over with that foolish move, never mind the gorgons!"

"Contrary to popular belief, the gods don't normally stalk their children," Percy said dryly. "Or even their rivals' children."

"Yeah, well, you, me, and Jason aren't exactly _normal_," Thalia told him.

"Thank you, for that information!" Percy said cheerfully. "I never would have guessed!"

Annabeth was simply watching the two argue.

"And then that stunt with the gorgons—!" Thalia groaned.

Percy laughed. "C'mon, Thalia, that was fun. Admit it."

"We were on a direct collision course for a four-lane freeway!" Thalia yelled at him. "I don't consider that _fun_!"

"'Stupid sixteen-year-old falling from the sky! I'm late!'" Percy mimicked a taxi driver's voice. "Oh, I'm sorry, does that only happen in movies?"

"Our freaking _life_ should be a movie," Thalia grumbled. "It isn't supposed to exist!"

"What happened with the gorgons?" Annabeth asked, curious. The wind whipped her hair into a tangled frenzy.

Percy gave her a mischievous grin. "We surfed them."

Annabeth raised an eyebrow.

"Somehow Percy got onto the back of one while it was in mid-flight," Thalia explained angrily. "Next thing I know, I'm on the back of the other one, yelling at Percy to get off."

"You're going to do one of those stunts and get killed, Percy, and I'm going to stand there and call you a Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said calmly.

"See?!" Percy said, gesturing at Annabeth. "She knows that I'm going to do them anyway, despite anything that you say!"

"Why can't you just let it alone and let Jason and I do the aerial stunts?!" Thalia yelled at him.

"Because half the time Jason is occupied or unconscious, you prefer staying on the ground anyway, and besides, any more storm calling and I'm just going to summon a twister to keep me aloft," Percy snapped.

"And have you pass out for two days straight?!" Annabeth exclaimed. "You drool in your sleep, Seaweed Brain! _And_ you kicked me!"

"You probably deserved the kick," Percy told her.

"I was giving you nectar!" Annabeth defended.

"And if I have too much, I'll burn up," Percy said dryly. "Besides, it would've worked faster if you'd just dumped water over me instead of giving me nectar."

"Oh, _shut up_, already," Phoebe snapped from one of the bunks inside the car. "Unlike you, Thalia, some of us stayed up to make sure we wouldn't be ambushed by who-knows-what."

Percy froze, his eyes glued to the security mirror. "Thalia?"

Thalia seemed to realize something was up. "Yeah?"

"It's a who. Not a what. Remember those purple people from when I was seven?"

Thalia swore violently. "They're on the train?"

Percy gulped. "They're in the car."

The daughter of Zeus whipped around, her bow and quiver instantly at hand. She nocked an arrow about the same time that the Romans drew their weapons.

"Phoebe," Thalia said tightly. "Get out."

The huntress looked at Thalia incredulously. "But—"

"Get. Out. Go with Annabeth. It's us they want."

"Hey, now, what makes you think that I'm just going to leave—" Annabeth protested.

"You can either leave of your own free will or you can get booted out of a window," Thalia said calmly. "Your choice."

Apprehensively, Phoebe and Annabeth left. The car door slid shut.

"Why are you here?" one of them asked icily.

"I'm sorry, we were just on a quest for the gods. I didn't realize that this train was already taken," Thalia said coolly, her arrow never wavering.

"It's been six years since you've been last seen," another said. "Almost like you've been avoiding us."

"We have been," Percy said flatly. "We haven't set foot in California since then."

"Nor most of Nevada," Thalia added.

One of them nodded to where Phoebe had been sleeping. "Who were they?"

"Hunters of Diana," Thalia said icily. "Probably don't want to mess with them."

They began to mutter amongst themselves.

"Where's the other one?" the first one that spoke asked brusquely.

Percy began to laugh.

"Right here," Jason said from behind the Romans, opening the car door. They jumped and spun around to see Jason with his sword drawn, Bianca behind him with her hands wreathed in hellfire, and Nico finally using his powers next to his sister (even if it was unintentional) and drawing all the shadows in the room towards him, creating a weird effect. "Sorry, didn't mean to crash the party," Jason said cheekily. "But I thought all of you might want to know who you're dealing with."

"Thalia Grace, daughter of Jupiter, but most of you already know that," Thalia said calmly, a small smile gracing her face.

"Percy Jackson, son of Neptune," Percy said, a wide grin on his face. "And now I'm not an untrained seven-year-old."

"Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, full-blooded brother to Thalia," Jason said cheekily.

"Bianca di Angelo," Bianca said with a sardonic smirk on her face. "Daughter of Pluto."

"Nico di Angelo," Nico said with a grin to match Percy's. "Son of Pluto, full-blooded brother to Bianca."

Jason's mischievous grin stretched even further. "You are facing at least one child of all of the Elder Three, all of whom have been on their own for awhile now, all of whom have been trained to not only fight, but _survive_."

"If I were facing those odds, I'd back down, even though you outnumber us," Percy said. "Because all of us are willing to pull some extreme stunts."

"He has _pulled_ extreme stunts that have scared the crap out of me, so it should definitely scare you people," Thalia said dryly.

"_Enough_!" one of them roared. "You're coming with us!"

Thalia let loose her arrow. It zoomed by his helmet, missing my a hair's breadth, missed three people behind him with less than a centimeter to spare, and embedded itself four inches into the wall. She readjusted her position, nocking another arrow. "Warning shot fired," she said monotonously.

The Romans had frozen from the accuracy of her shot.

Bianca's flames rose higher. Nico's shadows coalesced into something pointy, his adrenaline probably peaking. Jason had sparks running off of his bare arms. Thalia's arrow was charged with electricity. Percy had water from who-knows-where curling around his forearms, almost like a living creature. You could cut the tension in the room with a pair of those stupid plastic safety scissors.

"Well?" Thalia asked quietly, steel laced in her voice.

"Stand down," the apparently leader said reluctantly.

Thalia nodded. "Jason, Bianca, Nico, let them pass back to wherever they came from."

"And if they attack?" Jason asked coolly.

"You are welcome to use full force," Thalia said. One of the Romans blinked, imagining what 'full force' might be.

Jason nodded and stepped aside. Nico and Bianca followed his lead. The Romans filed out of the car.

Percy slid the car door shut noisily, and then ran to the other end and opened the door on that end. He came face-to-face with Annabeth, who had her arms crossed and her expression clearly demanding an explanation. Phoebe stood behind her in the car behind them, along with Zoë, Luke, and Grover, all wearing expressions that varied from curious to wary to demanding an explanation.

"You're Roman?" Annabeth asked dangerously.

Percy rolled his eyes. "Honestly, do I look Roman? Do I look like I have the patience for pointless drills and marching? Do I even _act_ Roman?"

Annabeth's eyes narrowed. "How should I know? I don't know what Romans do in the 21st century."

Thalia shrugged. "Fair point."

"You've been to Cali before?" Annabeth interrogated.

"Once," the original three chorused. "Not only did we get attacked by a small army of monsters, but we also encountered them," Thalia added dryly.

"You knew about MountTam, so why did you go there?" Annabeth asked.

Jason shrugged. "Cabin fever. We tend to get distracted and follow the yellow brick road."

Percy rolled his eyes. "More like the dirt brown deer path."

Annabeth studied them all critically. "So who's the Roman?"

Jason's hand shot up childishly while everyone else pointed at him.

Annabeth's eyebrow rose. "Why do I not believe that?"

"Because he's grown up around Greek influence?" Thalia suggested. "And that Percy and Jason have some really childish habits?"

"Hey!"

"You're the one who still takes pictures of me lighting fires," Thalia told Percy dryly. "And you're the one who likes to rig zip lines into the nearest body of water and dare Percy that he can't make a bigger splash than you. And you're talking to a _son of Poseidon_," Thalia said exasperatedly to her brother.

Annabeth facepalmed. Phoebe groaned at Jason's idiocy.

"So yeah, I can see why you can't see Jason as a Roman," Thalia concluded.

"Annnd _how_ long have you known this?" Annabeth asked.

Thalia looked at Jason, thinking. "Since he was two?"

"Annnnd _why _didn't you tell us about this?" Annabeth asked.

Percy started laughing. Jason was trying to futilely suppress a wide smile. Thalia bit her lip. Bianca frowned. Nico's lips twitched, mirth lighting his dark eyes.

"Oh, I don't know," Jason said sarcastically. "Maybe because the last time the Greeks and Romans met on a mass scale, the Civil War broke out."

"Demigods slaughtered each other. Sibling set against sibling," Bianca said softly.

"Why did you think that we made you leave?" Thalia asked. "You alone, Annabeth, would have started another war if you had said that you were a daughter of Athena."

"Minerva doesn't have children," Nico informed her.

"Minerva isn't even a war goddess," Jason added.

"And the name Athena is taboo to Romans," Percy finished.

The daughter of Athena looked dumbfounded.

"Plus, you would've given us away if you had stayed," Bianca pointed out. "And then war really would have started."

Annabeth looked affronted. "You could've given me some sort of signal!"

"All signals that I know are exclusive to this group and not to mention extremely subtle," Thalia said flatly. "And I refuse to teach you our language."

"And why not?" Annabeth demanded.

"_Maybe_ because you have a _spy_ at your camp, Annabeth," Percy snapped, good humor gone. "Maybe more than one."

"If you go around, teaching it to the camp, then we lose our element of surprise. Morse code was the code for sending secret messages two hundred and fifty years ago, no? Now everyone knows what it is, anyone can translate it, and it's used for fun. In this upcoming war, if Kronos really is rising, if he really is summoning his brothers and sisters from the Pit, and we are to participate in this war, then we're going to need every bit of surprise, luck, and skill on our side to win," Thalia said quietly.

"Hey, they aren't the only ones that knew," Phoebe defended.

Annabeth turned around, disbelief written all over her face. "So anyone who is in a small group knows about this, and yet the whole of CampHalf-Blood and whatever Roman thing there is remains ignorant?!"

Zoë frowned at her. "The Greeks and Romans are tied together, Annabeth, whether or not they like it. The Hunters of Artemis know because several of us remember the Civil War."

"Latin is hardwired into Greek demigods just as much as Greek is hardwired into Roman demigods," Jason said dryly. "How do you think we're able to pass off as Greek or Roman at will?"

"Latin doesn't come as naturally to Greeks as Greek does," Annabeth said flatly.

Thalia arched a dark eyebrow at her. "Then explain to me why Percy told Alecto to eat his pants when the Furies attacked the bus we were on?"

"_Esu mea braccae_," Percy told Jason. Jason bit his lip to keep from laughing.

"_Vos sunt_," Jason told him.

"_Gratias_!" Percy thanked him cheerfully.

"She is not eating your pants so that she can explain," Thalia said, exasperated. "And I agree, Jason, he is weird."

Bianca thudded her head against the wall. "_Habes mortem optare_," she groaned.

"_Non, non facio_," Percy protested.

"Uh, yeah, _facitis_," Thalia said, annoyed.

Nico nodded in agreement. Jason shrugged in a _what can you do?_ kind of way.

Zoë arched an eyebrow. "Are all of thee arguing about _this_?"

Thalia shrugged. "What do you expect us to argue about? The Romans already know of us. They already know about the Hunters of Diana. I don't see what the problem is."

"They have encountered Greek demigods," Zoë pointed out, irritated.

"They don't know that they have encountered Greek demigods," Thalia countered.

"They will grow suspicious on why thee are avoiding them like plague," Zoë said, arching an eyebrow, as if daring her to counter that.

"They already do," Thalia said evenly. "If this afternoon's accounts say anything. They weren't this pushy before."

Zoë's eyes narrowed. "You are meddling with things that should not be meddled in."

Thalia and Jason burst into laughter. "I've been meddling since Jason was two and I threatened Hera with dismemberment if she took Jason like she was planning."

Everyone that wasn't a Big Three kid went white.

"How did you—" Annabeth gaped.

"At the time, everyone thought that I was the prophecy child," Thalia smoothly cut her off. "I told her that if she took Jason I would happily raze Olympus to get him back."

"You couldn't have done that then," Luke said doubtfully, still recovering from Thalia's blatant threat to the Queen of the Gods.

Thalia smiled, no happiness or mirth in her eyes. "You just echoed Hera. And I will echo myself: Maybe not then. But give it some six years of surviving on my own, with nothing but hatred for the gods boiling up in me, my control over my powers developing by leaps and bounds. I would have sought out gods and asked them where the Roman camp was, and if they wouldn't answer me, I would have shocked them with increasing voltage until they would have told me. And if I couldn't beat them, then I would escape, and find a lesser god who knew the location, and then I would repeat the process, until I was reunited with my baby brother, and then I would seek out Hera, even if she hid in the depths of the place I would have hated most, and then I would inflict all the pain that she would have inflicted upon me all those years, separate from my baby brother. Can you imagine, Luke? Jason, the very person that I kept my sanity to myself for, taken away from me in the worst possible way… Can you imagine? Why should I have love for the gods when they are willing to take such a risk to trigger the prophecy and yet prevent a Civil War? What is worse, the destruction of the gods, or the destruction of the demigods? Can't you see? They are intertwined. We are an endangered race, and yet they rely on us…doesn't work out for them, does it? If we die, they're destroyed. If they are destroyed and the demigods are somehow still living, then we'll eventually die out as well. That's the flaw in Ethan's reasoning, as well as bargaining with something that will kill him as soon as Ethan relaxes too much."

Everyone stared at Thalia, in shock.

Percy finally shrugged. "I can't blame her."

Annabeth sputtered out of her shock. "You _can't blame her_?! She's talking about—"

"—what she would've done if Hera had gone through with her plan," Percy pointed out.

"—treason," Annabeth finished breathlessly. "Murder! Scourge of the gods! Defacing them!"

Percy rolled his eyes. "And _how_ many times did you, Clarisse, Luke, and Ethan curse the gods for not being there for us? If Athena had been around you your entire life, would you have run away? If Ares intervened before Clarisse's mother practically locked her up, would she have been plunged into the cruel world of demigods at a young age? If Hermes had been around, would he have done something to prevent Luke from running away? What would've happened if Ethan had even gotten some recognition, a claiming? We _still_ don't know his parentage, so he could one-up us right there. Tell me, Annabeth, that you have never cursed the gods for existing, for existing and yet not being there for their own children, for being a demigod."

Annabeth hesitated.

"Thank you," Percy said with finality.

"And besides, Thalia isn't leading us," Jason pointed out.

They all looked at him, confused. He shrugged. "Annabeth called Sis a scourge of the gods…and yet it was Percy that the Oracle gave the prophecy to. So really, if anyone, it's Percy who leads us, not Thalia, and Percy isn't a scourge of Olympus, so it must be someone we haven't met yet, or there's a traitor among us."

Percy's heart sank as everyone eyed each other distrustfully.

* * *

"How do you do it?"

Two fairly uneventful days on the train had passed, other than Nico accidentally and literally running into one of the Romans, who promptly tried to kick him across the room out of sheer alarm. Key word: tried. Nico, though winded from ramming against the Roman's armor, neatly sidestepped the kick and disappeared into the Roman's shadow.

The Roman's face had been priceless.

Now Percy was getting ready to get off the train, in Arizona, and Luke asked him how he did it.

"Do what?" Percy asked, turning to face the older man.

Luke shrugged awkwardly. "Insult the gods so nonchalantly. Fight so well when you're hardly thirteen. Survive insane stunts that would kill even the hardiest person. Keep major secrets hidden that well for so long. How do you keep up with all of it?"

Percy laughed. "You get used to it. And it isn't like it came all at once."

"What else aren't you telling us?" Luke asked resignedly.

Percy chuckled. "A lot. You of all people should know that you find out a lot when you're on the run."

Luke shrugged. Then he sat up, asking, "Hey, how did you—"

"Annabeth told me," Percy cut him off.

Luke frowned at him. "You don't even know what I was going to ask."

"Yeah, I do. You were going to ask how I knew that you had run away."

Luke frowned at the son of the sea again, but stayed quiet this time.

"Hey, man, we don't keep secrets because we think its fun," Percy told him, packing his bag. "Even though it was rather entertaining to see Annabeth with smoke coming out of her ears."

"Brave soul," Luke muttered. "Most back off if Annabeth's mad."

Percy snickered. "Had I been untrained when I first met her, yes, I would have been scared of her. But I was not, and Annabeth is a candle flame compared to Thalia's roaring bonfire when she's mad, so I kind of find Annabeth funny."

"Annabeth wouldn't appreciate that," Luke warned.

"I find her scarier when her mind isn't clouded with fear or anger," Percy told him. "I watched her build a bomb when she was bored out of coffee, a bent pie tin, and flower fertilizer."

Luke started laughing at Percy's slightly alarmed face. "Yeah, that sounds like something she would do."

"Wonderful," Percy muttered.

Nico appeared into the car from the shadows, dragging his sister with him. "Next time, try not to light the place up halfway through," he told her.

Percy covered his mouth, his shoulders shaking. One of Luke's eyebrows was raised.

"Hi, Percy," Bianca said dryly. "Hello, Luke."

Nico whirled around, saw the two of them, and smiled sheepishly. "Hi, guys."

"Hey," Percy greeted them, managing to stifle his laughter. "Um, how's that going for you?" He made a gesture at his shadow.

"Bianca keeps trying to light the place up," Nico grumbled, yawning.

Bianca gave him a sheepish smile. "I don't think shadow traveling is for me, Nick," she said.

"Later on, you'll be able to shadow travel, and Nico will be able to light himself up, probably," Percy guessed. "As you get older, your powers keep coming out."

Nico bounced up and down. "Really?!"

Percy shrugged, laughing at Nico's enthusiasm. "Maybe. That's what I did, that's what Jason did, and that's what Thalia did. Jason was able to fly at six, Thalia managed to do it at sixteen. Jason created a tiny tornado at five, I made one at seven. So…"

"You can make a tiny tornado?" Luke said, flabbergasted. "I thought that was just Zeus's kids."

Percy shrugged. "That's a secret exclusive to the Big Three kids only, Luke. But if you ever see all five of us fight together, with powers, you'll probably be able to guess."

Nico grinned and Bianca smiled smugly. Percy was smirking a little. He held out his hand and the wind picked up, swirling around a central point somewhere on Percy, and all of a sudden a little tiny twister was quite visible, dancing across Percy's palm. He made a fist, and a gust of wind blasted them all back a step as the tornado broke apart.

Luke looked a bit stunned.

"But honestly, you saw him and Jason make that huge storm," Nico pointed out. "Why would a tornado surprise you?"

"Tornadoes are spawned by hurricanes," Bianca said.

"And he's made a hurricane before," Jason said, sliding the car door closed. "So have I, actually. You know, son of the Stormbringer and all that."

"It was a tiny one," Percy said.

"No, the other one," Jason said, impatiently.

"That was still quite small," Percy told him.

"You captured—" Jason glanced at Luke and shut his mouth. "Put it this way—you were the trigger for that one."

Percy shrugged helplessly. "I didn't even mean to."

"But you did," Jason pointed out. "You were nine, you were by yourself, we were unconscious, and our ally was the only one you had for back up. And you managed to take us with you. By all rights, that should've been impossible. By all rights, you should've died. We all should have."

"Wait, so how did you know he did whatever he did if you were unconscious?" Luke questioned. He was ignored.

"I was desperate, I didn't mean to do it!" Percy protested.

Jason walked over and jabbed a finger into his chest. "Well, guess what. You did. And we can do it again."

"We have to," Percy pointed out. "If we want to get Clarisse and Artemis back."

"Without the desperation," Jason said, exasperated. "You won't be on your own again."

"I wasn't on my own," Percy challenged.

Jason threw up his hands. "He doesn't count!"

"Oh, yes, he does," Percy said firmly. "He nearly got himself killed in that encounter, trying to buy me some time."

Jason looked like he'd been slapped. Percy raised a challenging eyebrow. "Just because he's a legacy doesn't mean he's not the best swordsman in the past millennium. You need to get out of that mindset, Air Head. No, I was not alone, in either sense."

"He still surpasses him?!" Jason said.

"He's a legacy going up to a Titan, what do _you_ think?" Percy spat. "I have a great deal of respect for him, but he was foolish to go up against him."

Jason looked grim. "Do you think we need to call him?"

Percy shook his head slowly. "We have more, and we have the advantage, even if we are outnumbered."

"How on _earth_ can you have the advantage if you're outnumbered?" Luke asked, bewildered beyond belief. He was ignored again.

"I don't think we're practiced enough," Jason said hesitantly. "And we have no idea what the extent of their power is."

Percy gave a bitter chuckle. "Fortunately, life-threatening experiences tend to bring out those powers."

"But we'll—"

"Jason," Percy said patiently.

Jason stopped. "Yeah?"

"What did you do at Thalia's side for years?"

Jason glared at his friend. Then he sighed. "Okay. Whatever."

"Hey, it got me through the first encounter, and I didn't even know I did it," Percy said. "I think we'll be just fine through this."

The cousins looked grim. "I hope you're right, Percy," Jason said finally.

* * *

Annabeth marched past the group confidently.

"Hey, where are you going?" Thalia called.

"The road we need is on the other side," she said, pointing. "And since this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I'm visiting Hoover Dam."

Most of them looked a little bit startled. "You're _sightseeing_?" Jason finally had to ask.

Annabeth looked back at the bunch. "Well are you coming or not?"

All of them exchanged looks. "C'mon," Luke said finally. "At least we'll be there to drag her out."

Half an hour later, the ten of them stood at the entrance to the structure.

"Seven hundred feet tall," Annabeth said critically. "Built in the 1930s."

Luke rolled his eyes. "Five million cubic acres of water."

Grover sighed. "Largest construction project in the United States."

"Exactly," Annabeth said, looking at the two with approval. "You do listen."

Faintly, Percy heard Grover mutter, "Sometimes." Percy began to laugh.

Annabeth arched an eyebrow at the son of Poseidon. "Something funny?"

"Oh yeah," he said. "That was choreographed, wasn't it?"

"No," the three said simultaneously. They looked at each other. "Annabeth has a bad habit of spouting off random facts when she's mad, thinking, or apprehensive," Luke explained.

"You tend to pick up a lot of crazy fun facts," Grover told the rest of them. "_Slang_ is slang for 'short language'."

"The expression 'the whole nine yards' originates from when women made those heavy, old fashioned dresses. Each dress was made from nine yards of fabric," Luke supplied.

"The word _gossip_ originates when powerful people would tell their servants or whoever they employed to _go sip_ at the local café or what-have-you and eavesdrop on other conversations," Annabeth said.

"Like that," Luke agreed. "I haven't heard that one before, Annabeth."

The Big Three group looked a little bit weirded out.

"Come," Zoë finally said. "If we are to be here, we might as well eat. Let us find the dam snack bar."

Thalia covered her mouth, her eyes alight with mirth.

"Can I get a dam t-shirt as well?" Percy asked innocently.

"And visit the dam water fountain?" Jason added, futilely suppressing a grin.

"Could we get some dam French fries while we're at it?" Grover said.

They started busting up laughing. Zoë looked utterly confused. "What is funny?"

"Do—do they sell some dam books for Annabeth?" Thalia stuttered out.

"Like, _Random Dam Facts_," Luke joined in.

"I'm sure she would dam well appreciate that," Bianca couldn't resist.

Phoebe groaned, getting the joke. "Come _on_."

"Moooo."

Percy stopped laughing. "Did you hear that? It sounded like a cow."

"A dam cow?" Annabeth arched an eyebrow, smiling. "I don't think a cow has taken up residence in the dam, Seaweed Brain."

Phoebe restored order and dragged most of them through the door without Zoë making an unintended joke.

Annabeth arched an eyebrow. "You coming?"

"You go on ahead," Percy said hesitantly. "I'll catch up."

Annabeth stared at him. "One day you'll have to teach me that trick."

Then she turned on her heel and marched into the dam.

Percy ran to the edge and looked down. "What are you _doing_ here?" he asked the sea-serpent-slash-cow-thing.

"Moooo."

"Oh please," Percy growled, frustrated that he didn't speak Cow. "How did you even _find_ me?!"

"Mooo."

"That's _really_ helpful," Percy muttered to himself. "Go back to your nest," he urged. "It isn't safe for you!"

"Mooooo."

"Go on," Percy said, waving his hands at the cow, feeling like an idiot.

It disappeared into the depths.

Percy ran to catch up with his fellow questers.

Halfway to the snack bar, he slammed into someone. "Hey! Watch where you're going, you great lumbering oaf!"

Percy tripped, trying to get away from whoever he'd just run into, fell, turned the impact into a backwards somersault, and came up kneeling with his pen in hand.

The redhead mortal he'd just run into took a step back, her eyes wide. She was staring at the pen he was clutching in his right hand. "Why is it…"

Her voice died, and she looked at Percy, and then behind him. "You've got…something on your tail…"

She seemed a bit too much in shock, like she was walking through a living nightmare, not like she'd just seen someone with inhuman reflexes. Percy whipped around and immediately started swearing.

Hoover Dam was a trap. For everyone one tourist there were five monsters.

"I can't have a showdown in here!" Percy groaned, looking at the short ceilings.

"A _showdown_?" the tourist demanded. "Oh, please. And put the sword away, I highly doubt that will get you anywhere fast."

Percy turned back to the mortal, dumbfounded. "How did you— You're a mortal— Who are you?!"

The redhead huffed. "A better question would be, who are _you_? You're the first person I've met that can see those things, and trust me, I've met a lot of people—"

"Percy!" Nico yelled. "Get out of the dam!"

"I'll work on that," Percy yelled back, not taking his eyes off of the mortal. "Look, I don't know who you are, or how you can see through the Mist, but stay _inside_ the dam. It's the safest place for you right now, okay?"

Without waiting for an answer, he darted towards the exit.

* * *

When Percy finally got out of the dam, he was greeted with absolute havoc. He stared in shock at the sheer number of monsters.

"I don't know about you, but I don't think that it's possible to get out of this one alive," someone said behind him.

"I told you to stay in the dam!" Percy told her.

"That place is brimming with monsters," she pointed out.

"Not for long," Percy said grimly. "They'll join their comrades out here."

"I can help!" she insisted.

Percy pinned her with a stare. "No, you can't. This goes beyond you. I haven't had an innocent killed in my battles yet, and I don't plan on you being the first."

Then he shot out of his hiding spot with a sound like thunder, leaping impossibly high, grey wisps of something coalescing around him in a swirling pattern. Percy landed straight on the back of a monster, who stumbled from Percy's unexpected weight and fell, crushing two of his fellow monsters. Percy sliced him in half with his Celestial bronze sword, flipping so that he didn't have to halt the sword's momentum, changed the direction of the sword fractionally, and sliced through another two monsters as if it were a hot knife through butter.

All this happened in under three seconds, and the mortal Percy had left behind stood in their temporary hiding place, in shock.

Percy ducked under one monster's strike and dealt a deadly blow to another, slicing through the one who struck at him, weaving his way through the crowd of monsters, leaving a glittering golden trail behind him.

From the center of the crowd of monsters, a body shot upwards, towards the sky, seemingly hovered, and then plunged to the ground in a steep dive, aiming straight for Percy.

He slammed into the ground with enough force to dent the earth's crust.

"Oh, get up, Thor," Percy joked, slicing through a monster who had yet to recover from the shaking earth. "Jeez, you inherited your father's drama."

"Not my fault that you were about to be overwhelmed," Jason replied, standing back-to-back with Percy.

"So, cousin," Percy began conversationally. "Shall we begin?"

Jason grinned, even though Percy couldn't see it. "We shall."

The grey wisps revolving around Percy now solidified into true storm clouds, forming a column around the two boys thick with moisture and high-speed winds, an intricate spiral swirling about the top of the column in a symbol that prophesized destruction, expanding into a radius of thirty-five feet. Lightning crackled in the clouds, and with a deafening _boom_, it began to pour.

"I have to admit, I'm loving the adrenaline rush," Jason yelled over the thunder.

"I don't think either of us will appreciate the aftereffects," Percy pointed out wryly.

"This is like the second time in as many weeks that we've made a large storm," Jason laughed.

"Other one was bigger," Percy disagreed. Winds buffeted the landscape, but allies and the mortal Percy was trying to protect were unaffected.

The first tornado appeared. It raged without apparent purpose, but it swept up monsters and dusted them, carving a path of destruction in the already ravaged army of monsters.

Then it began to grow larger, fueled by an unseen source, and began to circle in a spiral, around an unseen point. The circles grew smaller and smaller, until the tornado broke formation and gusted out over the rocky ground, flattening monsters and dispersing.

The storm broke. The remaining monsters were fleeing.

"Go back to the others," Percy told Jason. "I have an annoying mortal who, I hope, had enough sense to stay in hiding."

Jason nodded and took a running start before launching himself into the air.

Percy walked over to his former hiding place, a scowl on his face.

"What _are_ you?" the redhead demanded. "A god? A mutant? No human could do that much destruction with only a _sword_!"

Percy looked at her. "There is no destruction," he said.

As he said that, the crater that Jason had made popped back into place like nothing happened.

"We're very careful to cover our tracks," Percy continued. "No doubt the media will be out here, speculating about UFOs and whatnot, but we'll be long gone. And no one will believe you if you tell them, so I wouldn't recommend that."

"_We_?!"

Percy smiled at her. "Yes, _we_. Look, I admire you for coming out here, and I'm sorry that no one will ever believe you unless you manage to find the right people, but try not to get killed for the next couple of weeks, okay? You see those monsters—run. You just had some serious power going around you, the monsters might think you're one of us until the smell of yummy demigod food fades, which should take a week or two."

"But I didn't—"

"I didn't want you to be straining against the winds Jason and I were making," Percy explained. "So I had to curve the winds around you. I'm just thankful you stayed in one spot."

"You honestly think I could've moved while a seeming _human_ was creating a freaking _hurricane_?!" the redhead yelled. "Of course I wouldn't have moved! I was practically rooted to the ground in shock!"

Percy shrugged. "I told you to stay in the dam."

There was movement behind Percy. The mortal stared as uprooted plants plopped themselves back into the ground again. One saguaro cactus planted itself into a hole, then seemingly changed its mind and switched spots with two-foot-high pear cactus.

While Rachel was distracted, Percy had jogged off. As he ran, he flicked his hand at the ground, and all of a sudden it looked cracked, like no one had stepped on the area or had wind stirring it or rain pounding on it in a century. Exactly like it should be, with even the scuffed path from Hoover Dam to the parking lot. The water got thrown into the Colorado River.

Percy leaped onto the bed of a truck Zoë had rented.

"Did you take care of it?" Jason asked.

"I have no idea how to handle shocked, demanding mortal girls," Percy admitted. Jason cringed a little. "Especially ones who think I'm either a god or a mutant alien," Percy added. Jason busted up laughing. Both boys yawned simultaneously.

"Don't mind me, I'm just going to pass out over here," Percy told Jason.

Luke and Annabeth exchanged surprised glances. Two weeks ago, it took the three of them three days to recover. Now they were just a little sleepy.

Annabeth leaned forward to look at Thalia in the passenger's seat. She was already sleeping soundly.

Luke swiveled around to look at Nico and Bianca in the bed of the truck. Sure enough, they were passed out as well.

"They are Big Three children," Phoebe pointed out.

"But…" Luke said quietly.

"Nico and Bianca didn't do anything with their powers," Annabeth finished his thought. "Why would they be tired out?"

* * *

**Ruby: If any of you guess why they are like that, I swear...I don't even know what to swear. On one hand, you'd be able to tell me whether or not it was a good idea, but on the other hand, apparently, I'm too obvious. So yeah, I'm kind of confused one whether or not I'd like you to guess what's up with the Big Three kids and all their secrets.**

**Yup! I'm back! (Hopefully for good...) But this fix was home-done, so it's all too possible that my stupid laptop will have a relapse. :( Sorry. But hey, I got a full chapter up! Yay!**

**Annnnd, I'm on break, so you can expect a chapter whenever I finish one. Next chapter should be in two days, assuming something doesn't go wrong. *knocks on wood***

**Oh...almost forgot...47 FAVORITES AND 52 FOLLOWERS AND OVER 3,000 VIEWS?! I love you guys!**


	6. Of Gods and Titans

**guest1021: Yes, I'm trying to work out the age kinks, but do you know how hard that is to keep track of? Thalia is the oldest, with Percy six and a half years behind, with Jason a year and a month behind Percy, Bianca is about the same age as Jason (as near as I can figure), and Nico is three years younger than Percy (two years younger than his sister and Jason). I dare you to figure that out, based on the publication date of the first book, calculate Thalia's _real_ age, and then go from there. Talk about confusing. And...when was Percy fifteen? I know I have some age kinks, but nothing _that_ severe... The Romans are a lot more pushy in this book, since Jason isn't leading them. Am I the only one who noticed that even though Jason has some very military habits in the Lost Hero, he was essentially Greek? He was-is-a lot more laid back than most of the Romans. With the exception of Dakota, but maybe that's red Kool-Aid induced. XD And I hope this explains Percy's attitude towards the gods better. I tried. I wrote the first part with you in mind, if that says anything.**

**(Listen to 8Dawn—_This is Why I Was __Born_ for the beginning two or three parts, it makes it so much more epic [assumming you read fast enough].)**

* * *

The woman pursed her lips as she leaned against a pillar. She wore a casual cream sweater and dark jeans with sturdy and yet stylish boots, with a thick belt going through her jeans' belt loops, suitable for holding weapons, and a heavy, smoky grey, hooded cloak lined with soft fur. She was tall, willowy, even, and yet her muscles were clearly defined, letting anyone know that she was a formidable opponent. Her curly black hair tumbled down her neck and disappeared into the folds of her cloak's hood. She had intimidating grey eyes, as if she were analyzing every move you were making, and how she would take you down, based on those moves.

"What do you want, Athena?"

She stayed silent for a moment. "You were always the most caring of your children, Poseidon. He has done more than most of your sons could hope for at the mere age of nine, you have every reason to be proud of him. So why does Perseus respect me more than he does you?"

The man shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "He wishes to see me, and I _am_ proud of him."

"He wants a father figure," Athena corrected. "The vile man he used to call a step-father was not suitable, and he is not around Chiron enough to consider him a father like Annabeth does. Neither Jason or Nico are older than Percy; and thus, he considers them to be like brothers."

"I cannot provide him with a father figure," Poseidon said gruffly. "Because of that stupid rule, I can hardly guide him towards people who would take care of him, much less let him live in the sea with me, nor would he want to."

"There are always loopholes," Athena said steadily. "Zeus said that the gods were not to directly interfere with quests or daily lives of the half-bloods."

Poseidon hesitated. "Is that a direct quote?"

"You weren't there when Zeus decreed that rule, were you?" Athena questioned.

Poseidon shook his head. "I was watching over my last demigod daughter, Mira."

A grimace crossed Athena's face, quick enough that it one would not be able to see it unless one were looking for it. "Yes, that was a direct quote."

Poseidon scowled. "Apollo just said that we weren't allowed to interfere with our demigod children. Admittedly, he was extremely dejected, but still…"

Athena smiled, though Poseidon couldn't see. "Now you see."

The broad-shouldered man turned, letting anyone in the entrance see a glimpse of his sea-green eyes, identical to his son's. He had turned to thank his rival (something that he was reluctant to do, definitely), but Athena was already gone from the Temple of Poseidon.

Poseidon turned back around with a furious passion, determined to do something to help with the quest. His niece was missing, his nephew was going to the ends of the earth to help the questers find his twin sister, and by Zeus, Poseidon would not be dissuaded.

Not again.

* * *

By the time the questers reached Mount Tamalpias—better known as Mount Othyrus—another day had passed, bathing the sky with reds and purples of the sunset.

Between Nico, Thalia, and Jason, the group of ten managed to get by the Garden of the Hesperides without too much trouble from Ladon and the Hesperides themselves.

"I don't like this," Percy murmured.

"It's too quiet," Jason agreed.

They had reached the top of the summit to find Artemis unguarded and Clarisse semi-unconscious.

"Go free Clarisse and Artemis," Percy told Luke. "We'll cover you."

"Wait—don't!" Annabeth cried. "It's a trap!"

"Obviously," Thalia hissed. "But if we just stand around here like idiots, nothing will happen, and nothing will get done."

"It's the Winter Solstice," Luke pointed out. "Artemis is a key goddess who has been voting constantly for doing something against Kronos. If we don't get Artemis to the Winter Solstice, nothing will get done for another six months, and then it might be too late."

There was a laugh from the opposite direction of where everyone was looking. "How true!"

The Big Three kids instinctively fell into formation: Thalia in front, Jason and Percy on her right and left, Nico and Bianca behind them, forming a pentagon. Zoë and Phoebe were instantly in front of their mistress, their bows drawn and arrows nocked. Annabeth, Luke, and Grover surrounded Clarisse's semi-conscious form.

A silver-haired man stepped into view from the shadows. How he was able to hide his bulk, no one knew. Behind him stood two _dracaenae _carrying a sarcophagus. Beside the silver-haired man stood someone the majority of them didn't know, but Annabeth solved the question almost immediately. "Ethan," she spat out.

"Ethan? Like, the guy who's raising Kronos, Ethan?" Percy questioned.

The silver-haired man glanced at Percy, and then did a double take. Percy grinned. "Hi, Atlas. Nice to see that we can do a rematch. Maybe this time you'll even win."

Campers, Hunters and enemies alike all gasped and whipped their heads towards the son of the sea. "Is he _mad_?!" Phoebe yelped.

Atlas's eyes glowed with fury. "You insolent little whelp," he growled.

"Sorry, I thought I was part _kelp_," Percy said, goading the Titan. "I don't know if there's an underwater plant species that's called a whelp."

"_Whelp_ is another name for a newborn puppy or cub," Annabeth muttered nervously. "Used most often as a disparaging form of address to a disobedient young man in the 1800s."

Percy chuckled. "Yeah, I'm not a newborn puppy. A disobedient young man, maybe, depending on who you talk to. You, I never obeyed in the first place, so I really can't disobey someone who I never obeyed in the first place…?"

Annabeth resisted the urge to smack her forehead.

With difficultly, Atlas turned to Zoë. "Zoë, my little traitor. I will enjoy killing you."

"You won't kill her," Percy spoke up, an eyebrow cocked and his voice light and lilting with challenge.

"You won't interfere, demigod," Atlas said. "This is a familial matter."

Percy blinked, not expecting that. "Familial?"

Zoë's voice was bleak. "Yes. Atlas is my father."

* * *

"You're the lost Hesperide," Annabeth finally said.

Zoë shook her head. "Yes. My sisters disowned me, and my name was blotted out from history, erased from the minds of men."

"For giving Hercules a sword," Percy said. He lifted Riptide. "_This_ sword."

Zoë nodded. "That sword has been in the hands of many, including myself for a time. I found it in the Gardens of Babylon, at the beginning of Greece's formation. A century later, I gave it to Hercules. No doubt, he gave it to one of the servants and lost it. Some centuries later, Chiron found me and offered me the sword back, but by this time, I wanted no part of it. He kept it, and several of history's greatest heroes and villains have held that sword, as well as some of the most ordinary people thee will ever meet. At one point in the 1900s it was in a museum."

"Someone must have stolen it, because Thalia got this off of a monster who had taken it off of a beaten demigod," Percy told her.

Zoë nodded reluctantly.

Atlas sneered and opened his mouth to speak, but Thalia cut him off.

"Percy?" Thalia said warily. She sighed. "Try not to do anything too stupid, okay?"

"I challenge you, Atlas," Percy said evenly.

Thalia shrugged. "Well, better at thirteen rather than _nine_…"

Phoebe squeaked: "Yep, he's mad."

Annabeth seemed a little stunned on how Thalia was so unconcerned.

Percy, for his part, seemed to know that he was facing the General of the Titans. He readjusted his grip on Riptide uneasily. How ironic would it be, that Atlas would be beaten by his own daughter's sword, he mused absently. His eyes were darker than they should have been.

Thalia, Jason, Nico, and Bianca all scattered to form a square around Atlas and Percy. As one, they plunged their weapons into the ground.

Atlas laughed. "What was that supposed to do?"

Thalia scooped up a pebble and lobbed it at him. Halfway, the four weapons lit up and barriers made themselves known, electricity arcing across the cube and frying the pebble to ashes.

"To make sure that neither can summon physical help," Jason explained.

As it was customary when a demigod fights immortals, Percy struck first: a simple jab, testing the waters.

Atlas swung his spear in a killing overhead blow. Percy moved to intercept it, going down on one knee to brace himself, and the spear and the sword met with a deafening _clang_ as Percy brought Atlas to a standstill.

Muscles trembling, Percy held Atlas a bay for fifteen seconds…thirty seconds, and then tilted his sword so that Atlas's spear went sliding off. Percy whirled around with impossible speed in grace, getting to his feet and nearly taking off Atlas's head as the Titan stumbled from the sudden lack of resistance. As it was, Atlas had a deep cut in his left cheek.

Percy launched into a flurry of offensive swipes, taking full advantage of Atlas's temporary weakness, his darkened eyes narrowed with concentration. He sliced towards the General's feet, like he was aiming to cut off his feet at the ankles and then changed direction at the last possible moment and cut a deep gash in his leg. He followed up by reversing the blade and swiping across Atlas's torso, cutting through his breastplate and ripping through skin and hard muscle, making it so that every movement hurt.

Atlas recovered, nearly disarming Percy—literally, Percy nearly had an arm cut off from Atlas's well-placed spear thrust.

"Oh my gods," Annabeth muttered, staring, as Percy nimbly spun away, slicing another gash in Atlas's breastplate.

Atlas spun his spear unexpectedly, clipping Percy in the chest—who, unlike Atlas, wasn't wearing armor. Percy's skin sparked as he hunched over from the pain briefly.

The two backed away. The flurry of sword swipes and injuries had taken all of thirty seconds.

Percy backed up to the edge of the cube and closed his eyes.

The hurricane appeared even faster than the one he and Jason did in Arizona, clouds of water vapor churning around with him in the eye of the hurricane. Those outside the cube couldn't feel anything, but Atlas was clearly impeded by the hurricane-force winds.

Percy took advantage of it and pressed Atlas backwards, spinning around the Titan like a wind-resistant hummingbird, his attacks appearing at random. When he stopped in front of the Titan for half a second, he kicked Atlas in the chest, and with a cloud of sparks, Atlas was sent flying. He shattered the lightning barricade and bowled into Zoë, Phoebe, and Artemis, who was still under the sky.

Percy collapsed: he had broken his leg when he kicked Atlas. Riptide clattered out of his hand.

The force behind the kick had sent everyone in the way flying: Zoë and Phoebe had gotten thrown in opposite directions, Artemis was sent dangerously close to the cliff, and Atlas himself landed just beyond where he used to hold the sky.

Annabeth threw herself under the sky, before it came crashing down and flattened everything within twenty leagues. She struggled to her knees, sobbing with pain.

Luke was battling Ethan, who had tried to finish the job by killing Percy while he was down.

Thalia was knelt over Percy, who waved her off and sat up with a grimace. He grimaced again when he saw his leg. "I _don't_ think that my toes are supposed to point that way."

Atlas rolled to his feet and started towards Percy. Thalia put herself between Percy and Atlas, scooping up Riptide. Atlas spun his spear, which had reappeared in his hand, and whacked Thalia in the chest with the end of this spear. She was sent flying towards the cliff before she righted herself and landed lightly next to the edge.

Nico was the next and cut a deep gash into Atlas's leg, and was sent flying with a wave of Atlas's hand.

Percy flicked his wrists, not entirely out of tricks, and blasted Atlas back a step. "Impossible," Atlas groaned, recovering from the electricity-induced heart attack.

The son of the sea painfully climbed to his feet, using Thalia's spear that was still stuck in the ground as leverage. "No," Percy's voice cracked as he said the word. "Not impossible."

Artemis kicked Atlas in the chest to get his attention, drawing her hunting knives that had appeared on her hips again, now that she was free.

Percy painfully limped over to Annabeth, braced himself on his good leg, and helped her support the sky. Everyone else was either helping Artemis, or battling Ethan and the _dracaenae_. No one saw that Annabeth had been close to losing her grip on the sky.

"You stupid Seaweed Brain," Annabeth panted.

Percy cracked a wan smile, his vision blurring with pain. "How do I know that this isn't the only thing that you'll call me stupid for again?"

Annabeth laughed breathlessly.

_Be ready_, Artemis's voice said. Percy focused in on the fight with difficultly. Artemis appeared to be losing. She was on the ground, her head at Atlas's feet.

"The first blood in a new war!" he gloated, and stabbed downward.

Artemis jerked to the side, grabbed the spear and kicked upwards, hitting the Titan with enough force to land Atlas just under the sky, pushing Percy and Annabeth away, who rolled away as fast as they could.

Atlas screamed curses at the sky as he was trapped under his burden again.

Percy staggered to one foot, nearly crashing into Annabeth, swearing under his breath.

"I hate breaking things," he muttered as Annabeth steadied him.

"Try breaking your collarbone," she told him. "You can't even sit up without assistance."

"I'm good, thanks," he said between gritted teeth, clinging to Annabeth so that he could stand up.

Thalia hobbled over, clutching her side, eyeing Atlas warily. "Artemis says that we need to leave. Ethan's cruise ship is docking, and we're in no shape to face off with a whole army of monsters."

"Not right now," Percy agreed, wincing. "How's Nico?"

"Concussion," she said. "He'll be okay. No long-lasting damage."

"He'll be back to annoying us in no time," Percy joked half-heartedly.

However half-hearted it was, Thalia laughed.

* * *

They arrived at Olympus with no time to spare. Artemis's dress was still in tatters from her imprisonment as she walked into the Throne Room, trailing a bunch of demigods.

Zoë and Phoebe were directly behind her, as Artemis's sisters-in-arms; with Jason and Annabeth helping Percy behind them; Clarisse was standing on her own, with the exception of a hand on Luke's shoulder to steady herself; Nico and Bianca were behind those two; and Thalia and Grover bringing up the rear.

There were eyebrows raised at how freely they mingled with each other, especially with powerful people that were complete strangers not two weeks before.

Apollo went to go check on his sister, but she gently fended him off. "Go check on the son of Poseidon, he is wounded worse than I," she said sternly, a small smile gracing her lips.

Apollo stubbornly stood there, arching an eyebrow at her futile attempts to get him to stop worrying. She matched his stance and expression, drawing herself up. There were some snorts of amusement as everyone saw that they really were siblings, despite their differing personalities and hair and eye color. They both had that sharp, slightly upturned nose, archer's bow lips, and pronounced jaw line, along with small ears that peaked slightly at the top and stubbornness to rival Athena's.

Apollo gave up and swiftly wrapped his sister in a hug and went to go check on Percy.

"It is as we feared," Artemis said, sitting on her throne. "Grandfather is being risen, bit by bit, out of Tartarus."

A muscle jumped in Luke's jaw. Clarisse rolled her eyes. Annabeth stifled a snort. _Old news_, was the general thought.

Demeter sat forward. "Yes, we know. I can't imagine why Zeus can't feel it, I know all the rest of his siblings can. We all know that he's being summoned out of the Pit at seemingly random intervals." She shuddered. "Horrid thing. But what can we do about it? We don't know how he's being drawn out of the Pit, nor do we know how to seal it tighter."

"He wants to rule Olympus. He wants a new Golden Age," Artemis said calmly.

"We can fortify the defenses around Olympus," Athena suggested.

"We can keep track of our weaknesses," Poseidon suggested.

The rest of the gods looked at him. He raised an eyebrow. "That's how Artemis was captured, no? Clarisse was trapped under the sky, who had been baited there by our enemy—Ethan. Artemis cannot stand to see a maiden in pain."

"Such as the Ophiotarus," Hephaestus grunted.

The rest of the gods looked alarmed. "Has it reformed, yet?" Hermes asked.

"It has," Zoë suddenly spoke up.

Mutters and whispers and chatters broke out among the gods. "Where is it, Zoë?" Artemis asked urgently.

Zoë turned towards Percy, who looked absolutely bewildered on why she was looking at him. "Summon the Ophiotarus, Percy. Thy art its protector."

"What?" Percy protested. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what optometrist you're talking about."

"Not optometrist," Artemis said impatiently. "_Ophiotarus_."

"I don't know what that is!" Percy said vehemently.

"You talked with it at the dam!" Zoë protested.

Percy looked at her blankly. "The sea cow? Bessie? Yeah, I rescued the thing from a sunken fishing boat and a bunch of kelp at the Sound, the night before we left for the quest."

Athena buried her head in her hands. Artemis smacked her forehead. Zoë closed her eyes. For a second, Percy was a little bit scared, thinking he'd said something wrong. Then he realized Athena's shoulders were shaking with mirth.

"It was right under our noses, Artemis," Athena said, muffled. "All that planning… And it was right under our noses."

"Artemis got captured, looking for the Ophiotarus," Zoë said to herself.

Percy looked so confused. "What does Bessie have to do with the Ophio-whatsit?!"

"It's the same thing, cousin," Artemis said patiently. "Your so-called _Bessie_ and the Ophiotarus are one and same. The bane of Olympus."

Annabeth swallowed. "Uh, Percy? _Bane_ and _scourge_ mean the same thing…how many times did you see it?"

Percy swallowed. "He swam upstream."

"He wanted you to follow him," Zoë said emotionlessly, although she looked like she wanted to strangle him.

"But he's just a baby monster!" Percy protested. "_And_ he's a sea creature! How could he destroy Olympus?"

Poseidon sighed. "There is power in killing innocence, Percy. The Ophiotarus himself couldn't bring down Olympus, but the power gained from sacrificing him…"

"Is enormous," Hades finished quietly. "Enough to shake Olympus from its foundations."

Athena gave the five children of the Big Three sharp looks. _Like you might be able to do, if you continue this way,_ she thought privately. It wasn't time to give them that information.

Apollo sat back from Percy. "Well, dang, dude, I don't think I even want to know what you did, because you broke your leg in four different places and cracked your ankle."

Percy gave the sun god a dry look. "Well, it'd be an awful shame if I broke my leg four times in the same spot at the same time."

"He kicked Atlas halfway across the mountain," Thalia supplied.

Apollo didn't know whether to look amused or impressed.

"I still don't know how you did that," Thalia admitted. "Because it wasn't from—"

"It was so cool to watch!" Nico exclaimed, cutting her off.

"It wasn't so cool to feel," Percy told him wryly. "I was literally two seconds from being impaled with that gigantic spear of his."

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "And at one point you were whooping Atlas's butt."

"And then he nearly chopped my arm off," Percy said dryly. "I barely managed to avoid that."

Annabeth gave him a look. "Percy, most would've been killed with that first overhead strike. You weren't. That makes you an anomaly right there."

"A _what_ now? That sounded like an insult," Percy said. "Is it just me, or did that sound like an insult?"

"Anomaly," Annabeth repeated. "You know, strange. Out of the ordinary. One in a million. Irregularity. Variance. Inconsistency. And now that I know that this is the _second_ time…"

"I didn't know. But thanks," Percy told her dryly. "And four years ago I didn't know what I was doing."

Luke arched an eyebrow. "From the way Atlas was practically glowing with fury, I'd say that you beat him then, too, so even if you didn't know what you were doing, you still did it."

"And you were _nine_." Annabeth added.

"Three years after he started training," Thalia added.

"Thalia reminds me," Annabeth said, staring at Percy quizzically. "You were literally a second away from being impaled and you blasted him." She paused. "With lightning," she clarified.

"Lightning is in hurricanes, isn't it?" Thalia asked. "You've seen him make enough of those."

"Yeah, but—"

"He's been doing small hurricanes since he was eight and a half," Jason told her dryly.

Thalia looked at him. "What's your definition of _small_?"

"Six feet across," Jason told her.

"Okay, yeah," Thalia agreed.

"And these two have been doing twisters since Jason was five," Percy said dryly. "Twisters and small storms."

Thalia chuckled. "So yeah, all of us have pretty much mastered the components that make up what we usually do."

"Which includes lightning," Jason added.

While the demigods had been having their conversation, the gods had come to a silent agreement to solve the Ophiotarus problem as soon as possible—_after_ the demigods left.

"What about the prophecy?" Ares asked a little bit too loudly.

The demigods hushed their conversation.

"All of them have the chance to trigger it, with the exception of Thalia," Athena admitted. "Tactically speaking, it's too dangerous for them to live."

"Kronos is going to rise, whether or not you kill us," Thalia spat, edging towards the extremely vulnerable Percy.

"You will not kill my son!" Poseidon hissed.

"Nor my children," Hades said strongly.

"Does it look like I'm planning on it?" Athena said calmly. "Thalia makes a valid point, and they would help the war effort greatly, whether or not it would be prudent to have them living."

"They are against the Titans, that much has been shown," Artemis spoke up. "If not from freeing me, then from battling against Atlas so furiously. If we kill them, then we are no better than the Titans we seek to imprison."

Silence as the rest of the gods digested Artemis's well-spoken words.

"All in favor of letting them live?" Zeus finally asked.

Dionysus abstained—maybe because he was sleeping, but that's beside the point. So did Ares and Athena. But everyone else…

"It's settled. They live," Zeus declared. "Now let us celebrate, for it is the Winter Solstice!"

* * *

Percy sought out Annabeth. Annabeth ended up finding him, first.

"So this is it, huh, Seaweed Brain?"

Percy whipped around and relaxed as he saw the person he was looking for. "Not for long, probably," he admitted. "My mom is probably going to want us to get caught up in our education. With the war just around the corner, she'll probably want us to stop going around the country for awhile."

"Until the peace comes," Annabeth surmised.

Percy nodded in agreement. "We'd still need to be able to practice and train somewhere. I might be going to Camp for longer periods of time. It'd be good to relax for a little bit."

"Nothing is ever relaxing around you," Annabeth told him dryly.

Percy shrugged, a small smile on his face. "It's weird how people find the ocean relaxing, isn't it?"

Annabeth laughed. "I don't think it applies to you."

Percy sat down on a nearby stone bench. "I can't imagine going back to school," he admitted. "Let alone high school."

The daughter of Athena shrugged. "You'll get used to it. It isn't as much of a nightmare as you probably think." She sat down next to him, careful to not get too close.

"What, you think that I'll infect you with my boy-ness?" Percy asked, noticing as well.

Annabeth socked him in the arm. Percy burst into laughter, discreetly rubbing the area where she punched him.

"Percy!"

Percy smiled ruefully. "That's Thalia."

Annabeth stuck her hand out. "Pleasure doing a quest with you," she said jokingly.

Percy rolled his eyes, but shook her hand. "I think I've rubbed off on you. Pleasure doing a quest with you."

"You have not!"

Percy got up to go, laughing. "If you say so, Wise Girl!"

* * *

"Percy!"

His mother squeezed the breath right out of him. Percy winced. "Mom…uh…not doing so great!"

"Do you know how long you've been gone?!" Sally exclaimed. "You said that you had to go get these two kids in Maine. _You've been gone for two weeks_!"

"Yeah, we ran into some Greeks," Thalia said awkwardly. "Overdid it a bit. Went on a quest. Battled a couple hundred monsters. A Titan. A couple other demigods, not all of whom were Roman. You know, the usual shenanigans…"

Sally glared at her over Percy's shoulder. "You're supposed to be a responsible adult!"

"I told him to not do anything too stupid!" Thalia protested. "Battling a Titan when he's thirteen isn't as stupid as battling a Titan when he was _nine_ and had no back up!"

Thalia's hair, more spiky than usual, suddenly sparked. Irritated, she ran a hand through her hair.

Suddenly Sally let go of Percy and started hugging Thalia, who gasped. "Miss Sally, I've got several cracked ribs from Atlas's spear," she gasped out.

"None of us are in great shape," Nico said dryly.

Sally eyed them all critically. "Come on in, you five. Dinner's almost ready. You're telling me about how Percy suddenly has a grey streak and how you all look like you have the world riding on your shoulders."

Four of them turned to look at Percy's hair, who instinctively reached up with a hand, as if he could feel the color of his hair.

"He does have a grey streak!" Bianca exclaimed. It was very noticeable.

"_None_ of you noticed?" Sally asked, surprised.

"I was a bit too busy trying to keep Percy from being killed," Thalia admitted. "By the gods themselves, no less."

Percy shifted his weight to one leg as his mother looked at him accusatorily. "What? I didn't do anything! It's their own fault that I was born!"

Sally snorted and went back into the kitchen.

"I have to agree with Bianca," Thalia said, resigned. "_Habes mortem optare_."

Percy frowned at her. "_Non_."

"_Sic_," Thalia argued.

"Seriously?" Jason groaned. "You're having an argument over whether or not he has a death wish in a supposedly dead language."

The two looked at him. "So?" Percy asked.

Jason threw up his hands and followed Sally into the kitchen. "I give up."

"What?" Percy defended. "You didn't even try!"

"You don't see the irony of arguing about you having a death wish in a dead language?!" Jason yelled.

Percy rolled his eyes. "Of course I got that, Sparky. That's what makes it all the more entertaining."

There was a thud in the kitchen. Bianca began to laugh. "He just banged his head against a wall or a frying pan, I know it."

"_Damnit, B, quit reading my mind!_" Jason yelled, muffled. "It's creepy enough without you knowing what I'm doing without seeing me!"

The rest of them began to crack up.

* * *

**Ruby: I actually do have an explanation for why this is so short in comparison to other chapters.**

**1) I was lazy (I'm on break, I get to be lazy for once).**

**2) This is wrapping up the Titan's Curse, and I didn't know how to make this longer.**

**3) I was lazy.**

**4) I was busy hacking into Hector's computer so that I could give the followers of Hector and Mora's story, Cursed of Kronos a heads up that hey, they won't be back for a while!**

**5) I found an old game of mine and I loved it to death and then I lost it and I just now found it again and I've been playing with that for ages.**

**6) I don't know what to say for six. Just insert a good explanation here and that'll suffice. XD**

**7) Did I mention that I was lazy?**

**I'll write up something much better than this for next week. That's a promise.**


	7. Ruby Will Be Back--Please Read This

**Kendra: Yes, we are well aware that the seven of us have practically abandoned this account, unfortunately, for a good reason. It's been brought to our attention that Ruby hasn't updated since the end of November and hasn't responded to anything since the middle of December. We thought that you guys _might_ like to know what's going on:**

**Some of you who have PM'ed Ruby before probably got complained to about her bronchitis and her taking three or four horse pills. Yeah, well, as it turns out, it didn't really work. Ruby apparently felt better about a week after she started taking the pills, and she and her family went out to Taco Bell. Long story short, she started coughing so hard she couldn't breathe and she passed out from the lack of oxygen, right there in the middle of the restaurant. The guy behind the counter called nine-one-one once he and her family saw that her shirt sleeve from where she'd been coughing into was splattered with blood.**

**Ruby was taken to the hospital where they did some sort of test on her and said that she had a strain of pnemonia that was resistent to the antibiotics that they'd put her on. Basically, things spiraled out of control, and for the past month, she's been in and out of the hospital and fever-induced hallucinations. Her mom, dad, sisters, brother, and the other six of us have kept watch on her at all times to keep her alive.**

**Last week, her fever finally broke and she's been awake and lucid for more than three hours at a time. I'm proud (and extremely relieved) to be able to say that Ruby will most likely make a full recovery once she gains back all the weight that she's lost and gets more fluids in her system. We've also taken the liberty to do her homework as well when we do ours so that she won't be overloaded with homework when she finally gets back up and running.**

**Ruby was extremely insistent on me posting this, and she thinks that she'll be able to write again in a couple weeks or so, and she apologizes for the long wait, although how her getting sick with something that can't be cured by medical means is her fault I don't know.**

**She tells me: Next chapter: Annabeth breaks direct orders; Thalia and the rest are frantic over Percy, who has disappeared; and the re-writing of BotL begins!**

**She also says thanks for sticking with her.**


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